


Song of the Sea

by LaMachina17



Category: Chinese Actor RPF, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Genre: Additional Tags In Chapters, Alternate Universe - Dark Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Anal Sex, BJYX Week (The Untamed RPF), BJYX | Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan | Sean is Real, Day Six, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Mermaid!XiaoZhan, Minor Original Character(s), Minor Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pirate!Yibo, Public Blow Jobs, Semi-Public Sex, Top Wang Yi Bo/Bottom Xiao Zhan | Sean, fantasy/fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:29:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27114713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaMachina17/pseuds/LaMachina17
Summary: Yibo has always loved the sea.He doesn't realize just how much until a beautiful stranger walks into his life and swims his way into the very depths of Yibo's soul.A cutlass adventure on the high seas where greed, lust, and danger are the rule and love is an exception only fools rush into.
Relationships: Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan | Sean
Comments: 219
Kudos: 577
Collections: BJYX Week 2020





	1. Man Overboard

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone,  
> Alas! Here is my contribution for BJYX Week 2020 for Day 6 AU - Fantasy/Fairy Tale. Hope you enjoy it! More updates coming very soon as the vast majority is completed already.
> 
> Below, I've linked my mood playlist for this story. Feel free to have a listen as you read. The first three tracks are for this first chapter.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuYf0taXoNw&list=PLkja7zaCjRnw8y-8WmHISJCqeFclg2l6G&index=2&t=0s
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> ♆

**Prologue**

♆

Yibo always loved the sea.

Growing up in a seaside town to a fisherman father and fishwife mother, it is easy to understand why. 

He learned to swim before he could walk, he learned how to write in the sandy dunes of the beach, and he learned his numbers counting seashells on his father’s fishing boat. His mother used to call him a fish out of water whenever he would run and dive head first into the surf. She used to joke that were it not for the nine months she carried him in her womb, she would think his father had brought him back from a fishing voyage. His father used to praise him, saying a fisherman needed to love the ocean because love and respect made for a relationship that would be prosperous all his life. That the Sea Goddess Mazu would care for him so long as he too cared for her.

So yes, Yibo loved the sea. He loved to dive into its depths. He loved to explore the seabed. He loved to swim with the fish and ride the waves back to shore. He loved the calm of being on a ship or boat. He loved the way the storms made the waves crash into each other. He loved the smell of salt and the feels of warm water on his skin. He loved the colors he could find in the coral reefs, unlike anything he had ever seen on land. He loved the magnificence of watching a whale or shark breach. He loved to watch the reflection of the moon against the surface of a calm ocean.

He loved all of these things.

But most of all, he loved how when he was lonely or sad, lost or afraid, or sometimes even just tired but content, he could pretend, for just a little bit, that the sea was singing to him.

♆

.  
.  
.

**Chapter 1 - Man Overboard**

♆

“Yibo, do you mind finishing this, mate? I’ve gotta piss.”

Sungjoo all but throws the line Yibo’s way, and Yibo has to scramble to keep the cannon they were both working on tying down from rolling across the deck as the older man stalks off with a laugh. He grunts as the full weight of it nails him in the shoulder before he can start pushing it back 

“Sungjoo, you bastard! You can’t just leave a cannon loose!” shouts Yibo as he finishes tying off the cannon. The rope pulls taunt, and he flexes his fingers as he removes his gloves. He straightens to standing and sighs as his upper back cracks, tilting his head sideways until another satisfying crack sounds. The release of tension so good he feels it always to his toes.

“Aww, is our maknae admitting his muscles are just for show?”

Seungyoun laughs even as Yibo elbows him in the gut.

“I’ll show you just for show,” he growls, tackling Seaugyoun to the deck. The older male goes down in a fit of giggles, and the two wrestle on the ground like a pair of squabbling lion cubs until a bucket of salt water is poured over both of them.

“Alright, alright, cut it out, kittens,” chides Li Wenhan. “It’s almost sundown and we’ve got work to do.”

The man tosses the bucket at the two of them, and while Seungyoun flinches away, Yibo catches it in both hands and throws it back at their first mate.

“I was working,” shouts Yibo. “right up until someone decided to throw a cannon at me.”

“Oh, you’re fine!” calls Sungjoo, apparently back from pissing.

“Yeah,” scoffs Yibo. “Fine enough to make sure you piss blood for the next week.”

The twenty-three year old lunges forward catching Sungjoo around the legs. He falls and drags Seungyoun into the brawl who in turn trips Wenhan. The four devolve into a round of play fighting across the deck that really is more of a raucous dogpile than anything else. Yibo’s foot goes into someone’s stomach, an elbow finds his throat, his fist finds a handful of hair and yanks, someone shouts in Yibo’s ear. They don’t stop until a pistol shot rings from the quarter deck.

“Alright,” calls Yixuan now he has their attention. “That’s enough, gents. If we want to get to Tortuga by tomorrow, we can’t be mucking about.”

The captain stands looking severe and imposing for all of five seconds before a grin splits his face and all five of them share a good laugh over.

“But seriously,” says Yixuan through his hand. “I just scrubbed that deck and your sodding bodies are making a mockery of my hard labor. So get!“

“Aye, aye, captain, sir!” salutes Sungjoo while swatting at the other three.

Yibo pulls his way up onto his feet for a wide bent-knee stretch. Seungyoun and Wenhan scramble about each other still on the ground and more than a bit tangled up.

“Bobo, you’ve got the crow’s nest. I want to make sure no one sneaks up on us.”

“Sure, ge,” says Yibo. It’s while he is looking over at Yixuan that Wenhan lifts up abruptly and Seungyoun goes flailing backwards, hitting Yibo right between the legs. The shock of it nearly blinds him as he shouts and goes tilting sideways clenching his balls.

“What the hell!! Seungyoun!!”

He limps his way around the deck Seungyoung on his heels screeching in laughter and surprise.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he whines patting Yibo’s tailbone with the heel of his hand. “It was Wenhan’s fault.”

Yixuan blinks where he stands as Yibo continues to curse at the other Leo, looking more than a little pathetic as he nurses his aching balls.

“On second thought maybe someone else should take the crow’s nest.”

BANG!

The entire ship shudders underneath their feet, and Yibo is sent reeling to the floor for real.

BAM!

Cannon fire. Loud and close enough to rock the ship even if none have hit them yet. Yibo lifts himself up to peer over the edge of the railing and sure enough another pirate vessel is sailing directly towards them.

“We’re under attack. Battle stations everyone! Sungjoo, get on the wheel and turn us about.”

Utter chaos ensues as Yibo and his brothers take to arms, manning cannons and prepping pistols. They hold their own, and Sungjoo prevents the enemy ship from getting in prime cannon fire range by swinging them round. It however doesn’t keep them out of gunshot range. The enemy crew opens fire on the UNIQ. They are out gunned 2 to 1, but that doesn’t exactly mean much to them. Wenhan fires on them with a pistol in each hand, Yixuan as well is devastating with his blunderbus. Sungjoo and Seungyou are both working the cannon angles going back and forth between the three on the starboard side, and Yibo... 

Yibo is their sharpshooter, their best shot. Their job is to cover him while he picks off the enemy crew one by one by one with his musket from where he has made his way into the crow’s nest. It’s a dangerous point to be stationed, but it’s the best vantage point on the ship for sniping down an opponent.

Yibo aims another shot and takes down one of the sailors who was about to throw a grappling hook. He lowers the musket to reload while the others open fire. Sungjoo and Seungyou fire a perfectly aimed cannonball straight into the other ship’s hull. Yibo, ready to fire, takes aim and shoots another man down. He reloads again, but it is as he readying another shot that fire floods his senses.  
A bullet rips through YIbo’s shoulder, pain erupting through Yibo’s senses. The force of the hit flings him backwards and out of the nest.

“Yibo!” 

Yibo hears one of his hyungs shout as he tumbles from the crow’s nest. He flips head over heels before landing ass first in the water. The impact knocks the air out of him, which is probably for the best since he sinks immediately under the surface. His arm is out of commission, white-hot agony as the sea salt floods the wound, but he can still kick, still try and pull himself back to the surface, but he is so disoriented, he doesn’t properly know up from down anymore. The sting from the bullet wound continues to burn in the saltwater, and all around him the ocean turns red. His whole body feels numb and cold despite the sun warmed water around him.

How much blood has he lost?

An explosion goes off next to him, and bullets rain down into the water. One of the shots grazes his already injured shoulder while another one catches his thigh. He dives forward to get out from the line of fire, but as he goes something wraps around his ankle and yanks.

He immediately thinks ‘shark,’ but there is a distinct lack of the pain that comes with flesh being torn apart. Could he be caught on a line?

He folds himself in half to see if he can find the rope through all of the bubbles obstructing his vision, but his hands don’t close over anything material. Whatever is wrapped around him is fleshy, made all the more apparent when the grasp shifts from his ankle to his hands. Some curls itself around his body even as he tries to kick away toward the surface, but whatever it is is strong. Strong enough that his kicks don’t faze it.

It is as his lungs start to protest the lack of air that he realizes whatever it is that has a hold of him is dragging him down deeper into the depths. He gets flashes of the creature, scales and a large burgundy fin, but he also sees tanned skin, glowing orange marks, long black hair, and suddenly, the stories of sailors being lured to their deaths don’t seem like fairy tales anymore. Shock manifests as panic, and like a guppy just learning to swim, he inhales seawater, kicking and flailing towards the surface despite the bullets he can see piercing through the water. He lashes out at his attacker, but the creature holds firm, dragging him down, down, down until he can no longer see the light of the sun.

This is how he dies. Drowning in the arms of a creature his mother once told him stories about. There are red and black scales, webbed hands, the endless blue of the ocean and not much more even as the edges of his vision turn dark. Clawed hands pry his mouth open, soft flesh seals over his lips, and air is pushed into his body.

The flood of oxygen is both a relief and a jolt to his system, and he drinks greedily from the fountain of life sustaining air. Clawed fingers curl around his head. Abyssal song echoes in his ears, hauntingly beautiful like whalesong. It takes Yibo whole seconds to realize what is happening as the monster holding him continues to breathe for him. In the throws of the riptide, Yibo breathes, slow and steady, under his savior’s guidance even as his limbs leaden with exhaustion and the pressure in his ears makes him dizzy. It sets into his very bones. Between the blood loss and the adrenaline crash, Yibo’s last bit of strength fails him and the dark pulls him under.

He allows the gentle rocking of a turbulent sea to carry him off, and Death flits away like a spector on the water. 

♆

“Yibo! Yibo! Wang Yibo!” 

The calls of his name are muted as though underwater, and Yibo feels a gentle push set him upward towards the calls of his name.

Yibo comes to with a jolt as his head breaks the water’s surface. He chokes and sputters and takes in as many lungfuls of fresh cool air as he can manage. Within a few seconds, two sets of hands are yanking him up and out of the water. 

“Yibo, you bastard! You’re alive!”

“Brat! You must’ve saved the emperor or something in a past life to have survived that shitstorm! I don’t even fucking know how long you were under.”

He is rolled onto his back in the cockboat to Wenhan and Seungyou’s worried faces. As he is gagging up water, he realizes that the sound of cannon and gun fire are absent. He blinks stupidly into the sunlight.

“Xuan-ge? Sungjoo?”

“They’re fine, you bloody guppy. “

That at least brings a smile to Yibo’s face, though he winces when he notices that somewhere between being shot out of the crow’s nest and being hauled up by his hyungs, he’s split his lip open as well. How he managed that he’ll never know. Gods below, his head hurts something fierce and his lungs still feel like a fire was lit inside them.

“It’s you we all thought were dead. I was afraid I was an only child for a second.”

Seungyoun gives a dramatic faint and fans himself like a swooning woman. What a would be actor he is. It makes Yibo laugh at least, even though he is hardly feeling cheery at the moment.  
Yeah, Yibo thought he was dead too for a moment when he was being dragged into the deep by a… Wait…

Yibo lurches up from the boat and all but throws his head over the lip and into the water. He opens his eyes and sees nothing but vast fathoms of blue at first, but then he looks towards the deep and sees it, a long shadow flitting by in the darkness. It is large enough to be a shark, but it's the wrong shape and bulk, too sleek, and the tail fin is angled the wrong way, horizontal like mammalian flukes rather than a vertical caudal fin.

He almost dives further forward, but Wenhan and Seungyou pull him back up.

“Yibo! What the hell!”

“Have you lost your damn mind?!”

Yibo gapes at the pair.

“I just. I-”

He just what? Wanted to verify that a mermaid just saved his life. Gods, he must be going insane. Must be the bloodloss.

“Ahoy, down there! Did you find him?”

“We got ‘em, SungSung. He’s alright. You can pull us up.”

“Fuck,” Yibo sighs under his breath, reaching up to check his shoulder while Wenhan calls up to Sungjoo that they are ready to be hoisted back up.

“Whao, whoa, hold up. Let me help you.”

Seungyoun catches Yibo’s shoulder and gently pulls back the collar of his tunic to check on the shot. Yibo expects the fabric to peel away with a sting, but it just feels wet and maybe a little sticky until Seungyou freezes entirely.

“What the-”

He looks down to see what Seungyoun has paused over. Wrapped around his shoulder is a piece of dark purple seaweed, bound up almost like a bandage. It’s kind of warm to the touch, and it’s covered in a thick smelly glaze. Yibo reaches up to unravel it. When he drops it to the floor of the boat it makes a wet, flopping noise. Mysterious seaweed aside, what’s more interesting is what Yibo has revealed beneath it.

“How in the…” says Seungyoun, jaw slack in wonderment.

“I don’t know,” replies Yibo.

He doesn’t have a clue how, but the gun wound that had gone through and through on his shoulder is completely healed.

♆

Yibo sits up awake that night. It is not a common occurrence, not with his hyungs around him all the time, but tonight… Tonight under the new moon in the wake of what he has experienced, he finds no ease in slumber.

It’s too quiet, too still for him. It puts his teeth on edge.

You would think loud noises would prove more frightening. Explosions, gunshots, the grind of wood and metal during a crash, thunder during a typhoon, even the rush of water from an oncoming tsunami. These things don’t frighten Yibo. Loud, while not necessarily good, is predictable. It’s the affirmation that the world is still moving around you, and so long as there is motion, Yibo can keep trenching his way forward. He can fire his gun at a loud noise, take a stab in the dark with his sword towards rustling movement, or run from the sound of footsteps if need be, but the quiet? Quiet is unpredictable.

The quiet before and after the noise is the frightening part.

The stillness before a calamity. The ocean receding before the tsunami rises from the depths. The quiet click before a pistol is fired. The quiet before the unknown.

And then after…

The silence after the calamity is worse. It is in the quiet when a gunshot victim bleeds out. It is the quiet below the surface of the sea that enfolds you as you drown. The total stillness after a crash that prevents movement is what ends life.

He’ll never forget how quiet the world became when his father died.

Silence is frightening. Darkness is debilitation. Silent and dark. The two words that no doubt describe death.

And after having his own near death experience today, the last thing Yibo wants to feel pressing in on him is the quiet dark.

So Yibo doesn’t sleep. He sits instead at the aft of the ship, a stiff blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a lantern at his side, and his sword settled across his lap as he runs a whet stone over it. It’s a mindless activity, one Yibo has carried out hundreds of times before. The shing of the stone over the steel is a reassurance, a rhythm he can maintain in tandem with the gentle lapping of water against the ship’s bow.

Yibo has always loved music. Loved to dance and sing and play the cups when he was a boy. Even after he was indoctrinated into piracy, he still liked to indulge in those pastimes, had a gift for them that made him worth keeping around rather than being tossed overboard or worse by the Yuehua crew. He imagines the music now as he sits.

The waves become a tenor, the quiet crackle of the lantern flame a sharp staccato, the occasional splash of a fish an accent, his stone zinging over his blade a percussion, he even begins to hum lowly in the back of his throat, an old tune he remembers hearing as a child but can’t quite place when or where he ever heard it. 

As enfolded as he is in his own world, he doesn’t notice the singing right away. It blends so cleanly into the tune he is humming, folds itself neatly inside of it, that Yibo can’t say when exactly he realized another voice had joined his own. When he does notice it, he immediately stops humming, stops sharpening his blade, to look around expecting Wenhan or Yixuan to have joined him, but no. He is as alone now as when he first padded his way up here in bare feet. Only, he isn’t alone, is he, if the haunting voice dancing over the waves is any indication.

Yibo rises from his seat, turning to face the direction the song seems to echo from, and he follows after it as though compelled. At the ship’s prow, the voice is louder and impossibly more beautiful, dancing over the waves like a phantom. Yet, Yibo feels anything but fearful.

_I said if the cloud cried, the wind will blow it dry.  
You asked, if the wind sighs how will it be consoled?  
I laughed but didn’t give an answer.  
I said little lad, don’t be silly.  
Oh, outside the window, the skies are clear._

“So you hear it, too.”

“Xuan-ge?”

Yixuan has come out of his cabin and onto deck without Yibo even realizing it. His booted feet make solid thumps as he makes his way to where Yibo is standing.

“I haven’t heard one of them since I was a boy,” he says as he reaches the rail. His hands brace on the wood as he leans forward.

Yibo turns to look at Yixuan.

“One of them?”

“Our ancestors called them Rényú, ocean spirits . The Greeks called them sirens. Most people know them as merfolk. Mermaids, if you will? But you already know the stories. We all do. Though if the tenor of this voice is any indication, it’s probably a male.”

Yibo stiffens. Red scales, black hair, and tanned skin...

“Get out of here,” scoffs Yibo, trying to sound skeptical. “You been in the spirits, Xuan-ge? You seem to be going a bit sideways in the head.”

“I am very much sober, Yibo, and yes. How else do you explain a voice like that? And don’t tell me it’s just the wind. The last I checked, the seabreeze doesn’t know human language let alone sing it. And don’t try and sound tough. You wouldn’t have been standing here looking out over the water like that if you didn’t wonder at least a little bit.”

Looking like what? Yibo thinks.

_I just want to hold onto you and never let go.  
Why do beautiful things always bring about sorrow?  
I’m only afraid that every time you turn away,  
I’ll think I lost tomorrow’s vibrant sun. _

The song continues, and Yibo chews on his lower lip. 

“I always thought they were just scary stories told to sailors to keep them from getting the clap from seaside prostitutes.”

Yixuan scoffs.

“No, they are very much real even if no one believes the legends anymore. Why we have one serenading our ship though, I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

Yibo swallows, his nerves rising into his throat.

“I think one of them saved my life today, ge.”

“Impossible.”

Yibo’s eyes narrow.

“Xuan-ge, I’m telling you, I think one of them-”

“It’s not possible, Yibo. The merfolk are killers. That’s all. Whatever you think happened while you were in the water today was a mixture of shock and adrenaline, not the mercy of a mermaid.” 

“But…”

Yibo’s protest dies on his tongue. What does it matter what he thinks? Yixuan is probably right.

“My father was taken by one when I was a boy.”

“Really?”

Yixuan nods.

“I heard the song and went to listen. I almost went into the water myself, but my pa, he came and stopped me. Shoved me inside the cabin and locked me in. The singing was so powerful, it nearly drove me mad. That’s when I heard the splash. He’d jumped into the water to meet her and never came back.”

“I’m sorry, Yixuan.”

“Eh, it was a long time ago.”

Yixuan points his pistol out to sea and fires. The singing ceases, whatever the cause of it frightened away by the gunshot.

“Xuan-ge!”

“Go to sleep, didi. You can thank me tomorrow when you're walking around and not sleeping with the fishies.”

As his ge shuffles his way back into the captain’s cabin, Yibo returns below deck to his cot. He rustles back and forth for a bit before sleep finally sinks into his bones, and if the lull of seasong echoes in his head, he’ll make sure to keep it to himself.

♆


	2. A Dance at Port

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man glides into the bar where Yibo and his brothers are "celebrating." Yibo is struck by the most beautiful smile he has ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the response to this story. Much thanks to emma_screams, puolimieli, and Rina for your sweet comments on the first chapter. I was initially going to wait another day or so, but I was too excited to get this chapter out, so here it is.
> 
> Chapter Warnings:
> 
> Racial and Homophobic slurs - Don't worry the guy gets a good recompense for it  
> Mentions of Past Underage Sex  
> Semi-Public Blow Job  
> Semi-Public Sex  
> Elements of Hook-up Culture/One Night Stands

They dock at Tortuga the next evening, and Sungjoo, Wenhan, and Seungyoun are quick to drag Yibo to shore for some proper celebration. What are they celebrating exactly? Yibo doesn’t know, but something to do with his “miraculous escape from death” according to Yixuan who had opted to stay with the UNIQ. He doesn’t want to go, preferring to stay at the ship while his brothers carry on with their usual romps at port. The noise and stupidity of a bunch of drunkards with too much coin and nothing better to do with it other than spend it on food, women, and wine are not appealing to Yibo, but here he is, sitting in a seedy bar, surrounded by seedy patrons and seedy tavern wenches looking to make a quick coin.

But at least the rum is palatable, and watching Wenhan get slapped by nearly every woman he approaches is good enough entertainment for the time being. Later while his brothers are enjoying themselves, he’ll take the time to find them some work. Maybe he’ll catch wind of a few good rumours of merchant vessels or a new village being established by this or that crown along the coast.

Sungjoo pulls a girl into his lap, and in her laughter she nearly upends Yibo’s drink. He glares at Sungjoo who just shrugs in apology.

It’s not like this is the first time Yibo has been dragged wenching. It happens occasionally, though he isn’t one to glance twice at the women, if you catch his meaning. Yibo had been seventeen when the Yuehua crew had deemed him man enough to have a proper lady deflower him. His then captain had even had the girls parade themselves in front of him. When the man had noticed Yibo’s utter lack of interest for the girls, he gave a nod to the matron, who gave Yibo a gentle smile before chassé-ing away only to return with a dark-skinned hispanic girl, only a few years older than Yibo wearing a strange half-pant, half-corset style dress. She seemed pretty enough until Yibo had gotten an actual good look at her to notice that “she” was actually a “he” dressed in women’s clothing and wearing makeup, and that was that.

The older boy had been kind enough, patient and instructive, and Yibo, at least, knew he hadn’t hurt the prostitute if the sounds he made had been any indication, but sex with strangers is still mostly unappealling to Yibo. Sex with paid whores even more so which none of his brothers have ever really understood.

“It’s mutually beneficial, Bo-di. You get a good scratch and they get your gold. Everyone wins.”

Paying for a lay doesn’t feel like much of a win to Yibo, personally. Not that he thinks of his activities between the sheets as a competition where there are winners and losers to begin with. That’s why, while Wenhan is gifted with his third slap across the face in as many minutes and Sungjoo’s girl, seeing this, delivers one of her own before traipsing away, Yibo contents himself to drink the swill that passes for rum in the fine establishment Wenhan chose and counts cards while Seungyoun gambles away his earnings just like any other night at port.

At least that’s how it is supposed to be until **he** walks in.

Yibo doesn’t notice him right away since he enters with a group of about eight other men, but the sound of shy laughter carries across the bar like a love song, just resonant enough to draw his attention.

The man’s back is turned to him, but he’s tall, long limbed and willowy, with long black hair that reaches all the way down to a trim, belted waist, skin the color of warm toffee. He seems to be Chinese as well, wearing a traditional cotton robe in a simple grey and red patterning, not as fancy as the garb Yibo might have worn as a child for New Year’s or the village Lantern Festival but in the same cuts and angles. Yibo can see a coral pendant hanging from his belt and a necklace decorated with seashells around his neck. He wears a single thin braid in his hair, woven through with red string and beaded with colorful and expensive looking seashells. What kind of man would dare to wear something so fine here? 

Predictably, the man is quickly accosted by several gentlemen, though he seems to handle himself easily enough talking them off. They are all left in his wake looking more than a little stunned, and Yibo is curious how he has managed that. His question is answered when he finally gets a look at the man’s face. And what the fuck! How would someone so obviously pretty dare to show up in such a place as this? Anyone could mistake him for a woman; and there are plenty of ‘straight’ men willing to turn a blind eye to such things if the face and body are pretty enough, and in this case, they certainly are.  
Perfectly almond shaped eyes in a dark chocolate tone, framed by high cheekbones, a delicate jawline, and lips so red Yibo wonders if he is wearing women’s lipstick, a small mole dotting the left corner of his bottom lip.

Their eyes meet, and Yibo forgets how to breathe as the man’s eyes narrow to half-moons in the wake of the most enchanting smile he has ever seen. He never thought a man could be described as beautiful. Handsome, stunning, gorgeous, cute, yes, but beautiful? This man is beyond any that Yibo has ever set his eyes on.

“Yibo? Oh, Yibo? Hello, anyone home?”

Seungyoun flicks him on the forehead, and Yibo jerks backwards.

“What the hell, hyung!”

“Whew, thought we lost you there for a minute. Where’d you go?”

Yibo looks back in the beautiful man’s direction and is disappointed to find that he has turned away again and is now leaning down to speak to one of the sailors he came in with now seated at a small round table. Sungjoo follows Yibo’s gaze and nearly chokes on his ale.

“Holy damn! Look at the peach on that missy. Now that is a sight for sore eyes.”

Seungyoun turns to look as well and nearly snorts up his liquor.

“I don’t think that’s a ‘missy,’ SungSung.”

“No, that is definitely a woman. No man is that pretty-”

Sungjoo chokes again as the man straightens and turns around, making very obvious the flat plane of his chest and the full extent of his height. Yibo tracks him as he moves across the room. He seems very careful about where he sets his feet as he walks to claim a seat closer to the band currently playing a raucous drinking song.

“You’re right, never mind. Forget I said anything.” Sungjoo devolves to muttering under his breath as he contemplates his liquor. At this point, Wenhan joins in with a laugh patting Sungjoo on the shoulder.

“You’re right, Sungjoo. He is very pretty, but I don’t think our Yibo would have paid him a second glance if he was a woman. As it is, he can’t seem to look away from him.”

“Shut up, ge!” Yibo growls under his breath before sinking down into his chair and taking a long drag from his tankard, and the conversation steers away from the handsome stranger and towards more common topics like supply runs and finding contracts. Wenhan, apparently tired of being slapped around, even goes to investigate a table where some bigshot seems to be looking for a vessel to contract. Sungjoo, on the other hand, disappears with his girl from earlier to Yibo doesn’t want to know where.

Yibo steals glances at the stranger far more often than he would ever admit. He doesn’t drink or eat anything, but he does engage in conversation with the people who approach him. He claps along to the band’s music no matter the fact that the later the night progresses the worse their tuning becomes. Yibo doesn’t realize how apparent he is being until Seungyoun sidles up next to him uncharacteristically cheery considering he just lost another game of flipjack and five doubloons with that.

“Why don’t you go over and talk to him?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Oh, please! You’ve been staring at him since he walked into the bar. Just go talk to him. Maybe ask him to dance. It’s not like he’s accepted anyone else’s advances.”

Yibo lets out a sound that is halfway between a sigh and a hiss.

“Go away, Seungyoun.”

“Yibo,” whines the other man back at Yibo. “It’s okay to be attracted to someone. You know we support you no matter what.”

“You think I care what you assholes think?”

“Hell yeah, you do, but that’s not why you insist on living like a Buddhist monk.”

“Just because you take pleasure in fucking around doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

“Maybe, but I bet you’d take pleasure in him if the way you are undressing him with your eyes is any indication.”

Seungyoun waggles his eyebrows at Yibo suggestively, and Yibo refrains from punching his hyung in the face. He settles for pushing his ‘twin’ backwards off his chair. Seungyoun goes down laughing, nearly busting a rib by the sound of it, as Yibo turns back to the stranger who is suspiciously looking straight at Yibo. He isn't sure if he imagines it or not, but the man winks at him coquettishly, tilting his head in a beckoning manner before returning back to watching the band and the drunk dancers on the floor. 

Without further ceremony, Yibo downs what’s left of his rum and rises from his chair. He hears Seungyoun whooping behind him- “That’s right, Bobo. Get your dick wet!” -and ignores him. He shouldn’t have pulled his punch earlier. He’ll get him later.

In the meantime, he finds himself pulling a chair out across from the handsome, beautiful stranger who doesn’t seem the slightest bit put off by his approach. He even smiles at Yibo as though he were greeting an old friend. He ducks his head down in a small bow as Yibo settles himself in his seat. He notices that the man doesn’t have a drink in hand nor anywhere near him on the table.

“I’ve never seen you here before. First time in Tortuga.”

“First time walking the port, yeah.”

Yibo’s brow furrows. What an odd response. The stranger’s eyes turn to him as he answers. Yibo suddenly feels very warm.

“Is it a good walk so far?”

The man’s eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles.

“It’s noisier than I imagined, and I wasn’t prepared for the smell, but the company has certainly improved.”

So it would seem Yibo’s attention is not unwelcome if the coquettish lilt to his voice is anything to go by. A loud noise draws the beauty’s attention away, and Yibo looks over to see that one of the tavern wenches is presently offering her oral services to one of the men in a darkened corner that merely provides an illusion of privacy. There’s no question about what is going on over there.

Yibo clears his throat with a cough, drawing back his stranger’s attention.

“Hm, are you drinking anything?”

“Just water.”

Interesting.

“You had the gall to order water from this barkeep.”

Yibo has been to Tortuga enough to know what happens to people who insult this particular establishment’s ‘high quality’ alcohol, the poor unfortunate sods tossed out into the nearest pig pen with the very water they ordered.

“Nothing else smells good, and I’d rather not poison myself.”

“Fair enough, Gege.”

Delicate brows rise nearly into his hair.

“Gege? What makes you so sure I’m older than you?”

Yibo smirks, pleased he’s caught on to Yibo’s teasing.

“Most people I meet are. You also have the air of a gege rather than a didi.”

“Oh really? And what air is that?”

“Well, for one, you’re drinking water in a pirate bar.”

The mystery man laughs, and the sound reminds Yibo of the seashell wind chimes his mother would hang on their front porch. 

Just then the band strikes up a jig, one that Yibo knows the step pattern to.

“Would you like to dance?”

The man’s cheeks flush a shade of pink that is all too charming despite the dull yellow light of the bar.

“I don’t know how.”

Yibo stands up and holds out his hand.

“I’ll show you.”

The man worries at his bottom lip, nervously. The impulse that surges into his teeth to bite into that soft flesh is terribly compelling, but then his handsome stranger’s hand slides into his own and he is too busy noticing how much smaller that hand is to carry on that thought. His fingers close around the entire width of it; he can feel every knuckle and bone beneath soft, uncalloused skin so very unlike his own. As Yibo pulls the stranger onto his feet, he seems unsteady despite not being even remotely in the drink, so Yibo keeps a solid hold on him even going so far as to take his other hand in his.< /p>

Yibo shuffles backwards and sideways towards the center of the room where most of the dancing men and women have collected. He sets the pair of them on the outer edge to coach his dance partner through the basic footwork of the dance, several hoping kicks followed by woven footwork that the man copies back to him. He does well, diligently watching and learning, and eventually he relaxes enough to enjoy just moving his body on the dance floor. They don’t hold hands or link arms or anything, but they don’t stray far from one another either, circling each other amidst the other dancers moving around.

But then the music picks up and the drunks floating throughout the bar get even more excitable. One of the girls collides with Yibo’s dance partner and it sends the man tumbling off balance. Yibo is there though. He wraps his arms around the man’s waist and pulls him bodily into himself, lining them up Yibo’s front to the thinner man’s back. He trips over his own feet again, but Yibo keeps him upright. 

“S-sorry,” he gasps out.

Yibo laughs. It’s endearing how much he seems to fret over his balance, like a lad just gaining his sea legs.

“Follow me. I won’t let you fall.”

“I am in your hands, Laoshi.”

Yibo’s brow arches, real interest now stirring in the pit of his stomach as the stranger despite being taller and older than him submits to his care so readily. Yibo sets a firmer hold around a waist that is so small he can nearly wrap both his hands entirely around it. Yibo moves them through the crowd of sweaty bodies and alcohol soaked limbs. He guides and commands at once, grinds into his dance partner’s backside and manipulates him into the correct forms while keeping an eye on the other men and women around them.

Eventually, he turns his partner so they are facing each other and finds half-lidded eyes, blown pupils, and flushed cheeks. 

“What’s your name?” he asks Yibo, and they are so close Yibo can feel the fan of the other male’s breath over his face.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, love.”

“Oh, why’s that? Trying to keep yourself a mystery?”

“Just the way it has to be, but you can always tell me yours.”

He laughs as Yibo spins him in a wide circle.

“Why should I tell you my name when you won’t tell me yours?”

“Because I’m handsome and charming.”

“More like arrogant and insufferable.”

“You love it though.”

“Do I?”

“I bet you do, and when I win that bet, you’ll tell me your name when you’re ready to admit it.”

“Mmm.”

The fact that Yibo has to look up to meet that hazy gaze is more of a turn on than he expected it would be, and he’s too punch drunk to resist the temptation in front of him. He rises onto the balls of his feet and kisses his mysterious stranger, right there in the middle of the bar.

There are catcalls and wolf whistles, but it hardly matters.

Those lips are as plump and full as he imagined. There is also, he notes, a distinct lack of the synthetic taste of lipstick he expected. The man tastes like the ocean, clean and laced with freedom, and Yibo feels like he is riding the highest crest all the way back to shore. Yibo parts his lips, and his tongue flicks out across those impossibly red lips, but before he can deepen their connection, some burly thug has the audacity to shove Yibo’s partner sideways. 

“Get lost, ya poof!”

Yibo barely catches him around the waist, though when a hard shove meets his own shoulder they both end up on the floor.

“Why don’t you and your little whore piss off somewhere else? No one here wants to see that shit, you chink faggots!”

The band has stopped playing, and for the most part people have cleared away. Yibo picks himself up off the ground glaring towards the oversized white man wearing a white tunic and blue trouser who has just shoved them. He is wearing a headscarf in the most sickening shade of puke yellow Yibo has ever seen. 

Yibo glances around as he stands. The guy seems to have at least four other crew mates lingering on the periphery if the way they stalk around the present conflict is any indication. He can’t see Sungjoo anywhere, but Wenhan and Seungyoun are still seated at the bar. Both of his crewmates are looking over, and Wenhan has a hand braced over his cutlass, one foot already on the floor. Yibo flicks his fingers at him to let him know everything is fine for now. Behind him, he hears his dance partner shuffling his way to his feet.

“I’m sorry, I must’ve misheard you. What did you just call us?”

“What? You deaf too, wanker? I called you and your whore a pair of chink faggots.”

Yibo’s fist clenches to punch the brute in the face, but a hand settles on Yibo’s shoulder, and a musical voice whispers into his ear.

“Hey, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just leave.”

Yibo’s rage cools but doesn’t diminish at the gentle coaxing. Yibo lifts a hand to the man’s cheek as he turns to look him in the eye. A moment passes between them that Yibo really can’t explain. It unfurls between them like a sun coral looking for the light of dawn, eager for more and waiting to bloom.

“Well ain’t you just about perty enough to pass for a woman.”

The moment bursts and the puke scarf asshole has returned. Yibo turns a gaze hard enough to cut steel on the scumbag. Behind him, his stranger’s body tenses, and Yibo can feel the nerves rolling off of him in waves. Despite that though, the man forces a smile as he addresses the brute.

“Sorry to disturb, but we don’t want any trouble. We’ll be going now.”

At the sound of his silky voice, the thug blinks stupidly much like the other men Yibo had seen approach the beauty earlier. Only this one doesn’t seem to take the dismissal for what it is. The puke scarf wearing thug clicks his tongue and eyes the lean male from head to toe. Yibo’s blood boils.

“You know, they say dem Chinaman ain’t got much to show as far as equipment goes. Say how ‘bout you leave this wanker to himself and spend your evening with me and me mates. I bet we can pay better, too.”

“I’m not selling anything.”

“Even better.”

Greasy fingers reach forward, and the other pirate’s teeth crack as Yibo’s fist meets his jaw.

“You right bastard!”

Yibo ducks down to avoid the swing of the asshole’s arm and surges upward ramming his elbow into the thug’s chin. A third strike comes from behind Yibo as the mystery man delivers a booted kick direct to the thug’s balls.

“Fuckers!”

Somebody whoops across the room, “Fight!” and a shot rings out into the ceiling.

Yibo draws his pistol into his right hand and grabs his, apparently, feisty date’s forearm. He ducks down and starts to weave them out of the thick of the brawl. There are women screaming, men cursing, and the barkeep has already pulled out his own gun. One of the thug’s crewmates tries to cut Yibo off, but he just reels back and kicks him in the face before shuffling in the direction of the stairs.

“This way,” shouts Yibo, pulling on the arm still in his grip.

“Where are we going?” the other man shouts over the noise around them.

“Just keep moving. I’ve got you.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Seungyoun jump onto his feet with a howl as he too joins in the fun. Wenhan, he can’t find. Either he is in the thick of the mess or he’s set himself behind a pillar. While he is looking through, he doesn’t see the pirate armed with a chair heading directly for him, but he does hear him yell. Yibo’s head turns, and he lifts an arm to block the blow only to see a small hand thrust forward from behind him. The heel of it breaks the pirate’s nose and the thug drops like a lead weight, the chair falling on top of his head.

Wide chocolate eyes meet Yibo’s when he looks back.

“Nice hit, Baobei.”

The blush returns and with it Yibo’s smirk.

“Somebody get those two fuckers!”

The shout goes up from across the room, and Yibo sees Puke Scarf pointing a pistol straight at them.

“Get down!”

Yibo ducks them both down behind an overturned table just as the shots ring out. The mother fuckers are opening fire on them which means this isn’t just a bar brawl anymore. They’re out for his blood. Yibo draws his pistol aims and fires off two shots before peeking around the corner. He hasn’t hit anything, and the oversized thug spots him. Just as the big lug moves to go after them, a bottle breaks against the side of his face, and Yibo finds Seungyoun’s laughing face on the other side of it.

“Didi! Get the hell outta here! Wenhan, you bastard! Hurry up with that dang table dresser.”

Just then a body goes flying across the room to break straight through a table and Wenhan gives him a salute which Yibo returns before looking back at his boy as a few of the thugs begin to throw hands in their direction.

“Come on.”

Yibo guides his companion up the stairs taking them two at a time as the thugs start to give chase despite Yibo’s brothers. Yibo breaks open the door to the roof just as a shot fires in their direction. Once they are both through, Yibo slams the door shut and braces it with a plank while the taller man presses his weight against it. 

“You have some pretty amazing crewmates, you know that.”

“My brothers,” Yibo replies with a smile. “Yeah, they are pretty great.”

BAM! BAM!

“Open up, you bloody bilge rats before I cut out your spleens!”

Sounds like Puke Scarf.

Yibo pulls the lithe male away from the door backing up while scanning the streets for an out. They aren’t so high up that a jump off the roof would kill them, but it would definitely hurt, and considering his handsome companion’s penchant for falling at the slightest disturbance, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. The streets are mostly deserted, but there are still a few carts and wagons wheeling through. It gives him an idea.

“Do you trust me?”

Brown eyes look at him, slightly panicked but also bright with excitement and far too open for their own good. Shit! He doesn’t even know Yibo’s name, yet here Yibo is asking him if he trusts him. How much more messed up can he get?

“Yes,” the man’s voice pulls him from his musings, and Yibo looks up in surprise. “Yes, I trust you.”

He shouldn’t though. He really, really shouldn’t.

Even so. Yibo shifts his gun into his right hand and grips the other man by the forearm. He pulls them both to the edge of the roof just as the men from the bar break their way through the access door. The other man nearly trips as he pulls, but Yibo keeps him steady. He fires two shots, turns to the other man, and says, “Don’t look down.”

Then he jumps, cradling the other in his arms as more gun shots go off behind them. They land in a heap in a moving cart full of hay. Yibo grunts as he lands flat on his back with the weight of the other on his chest, but at least the straw cushioned his landing enough that he doesn’t think he’ll have any bruises to show for it.

“Holy hell,” grunts the cart driver as his horse whinnies in protest at the added weight. Yibo holds a finger to his lips as the beauty across his chest looks up in askance. He gets the message it would seem because lays his head back on Yibo's chest. Yibo hears some rustling as the driver turns to inspect his cargo, but he finds nothing. They are too well hidden, buried underneath piles of straw. 

More gun shots ring out, and Yibo hears the whooping and hollering as several men get tossed out onto the street on their backsides.

“Bloody pirates shooting their boom sticks at all hours of the night,” curses the man. The horse snorts almost in response. “Yes, yes, I know, Bessy, but at least they have coin, right?

Yibo sighs in relief as the cart keeps moving forward which is exactly what he had been counting on. He can see through the strings of hay as the thugs on the rooftop peer over the edge looking for them, but they won’t find anything. Especially not as the cart rounds the corner rolling closer to the docks.

This is about the moment when Yibo realizes he has made a tactical error. He is now lying beneath the very warm, very svelte body of a man he is highly attracted to, and in the aftermath of a bar fight, his adrenaline high is beginning to shift into arousal. Already his pants tighten, growing more uncomfortable by the second. He wonders if his heartbeat is audible to his present company considering that head of silky smooth black hair is still resting on his chest.

The wheels jump over a pothole and the pair of them are rustled closer into each other. Yibo’s knee finds its way between the legs of the man lying over him. It would seem he is not the only one affected by the close proximity. The beauty lifts his head from Yibo’s chest, and Yibo’s gaze darkens as pretty brown eyes meet his in the dark. The gleam he finds there must be a reflection of the moon. It’s otherworldly and enticing, and when those seemingly bottomless irises flash at him, he sees naught but a mirror of his own heightening lust.

Yibo’s hands fist into the collar of the robe and tug. He nearly groans as their teeth clash together in the most volatile kiss Yibo has ever been a party to. His teeth catch the edges of those lips, receiving a hushed moan for the rough treatment. He sucks hard on the mole there and soaks in the taste of the man above him. He tears the robe open and delves inside to touch warm smooth skin. There is a coarse trail of hair leading down, but before Yibo can gain his prize, his soon to be bedmate draws back and descends the length of Yibo’s body. Hands tug inexpertly at his belt and trousers, untying and opening the front and freeing his erection.

He can see his eyes widen, no doubt in wonder at Yibo’s sizeable sex. He seems unsure but only for a moment before lowering his mouth to Yibo's manhood.

Yibo closes his teeth over his own arm as those lips close over the head of his cock and sink down. His hands card into dark locks of hair, and when he isn’t pushed off, he grips down and pulls. The sound the man makes is too quiet for him to hear, but he feels the rumble of the beauty’s throat around his member all the way to the root. He starts to bob his head over Yibo, and fuck! If it doesn’t drive the young pirate mad. Yibo braces his feet on the cart bottom and bucks up into that moist, hot cavern, nearly groaning from the delicious slide of it.

Yibo’s hips continue to cant up in a fever pitch, and sea gods, that mouth is truly wicked, tongue swirling over the head of his cock and into the slit at the top. A delectable drag forces his head backward with a thud as his bedmate sucks greedily at him. Eventually, the dual sensation of being sucked and licked becomes too much, and Yibo tugs the hair in his hands to pull him off, but the guy doubles his efforts giving one last hard suck before Yibo’s orgasm hits him like a cannonball, emptying himself into that sinful orifice. He drinks Yibo down like an ambrosia, lapping him clean like a cat, and Yibo is certain he’ll have a scar on his arm from how hard he is biting down on his bracer.

While he is recovering from his high, the cart comes to a stop, and Yibo tenses, worried they’ve been far too loud. He waits and listens while the gentleman, grumbling under his breath, unhitches the horse and leads the animal away. When he is out of hearing range, Yibo drags the beauty up by the hair and claims his mouth, tasting his own spunk on those swollen lips.

“Gods, you are a dream,” says Yibo, feeling drunk on this feeling now that the danger of discovery is past.

“Good?” the man has the audacity to ask.

“Good?!” Yibo parrots. “Are you kidding? My cum is still drying on your chin.”

The smile returns, coy and shy at once.

“En, glad you found it enjoyable.”

“I’ll show you ‘enjoyable.’”

Yibo closes up his pants and hurls himself upwards and out of the cart. Laughter follows him, but he reaches up to help the elder down from the cart through his elation, and then Yibo is laughing too as he tugs him down the docks. He knows what he’s looking for, knows there is bound to be one here, and he spots it at the tail end of the dock, a covered rowboat just big enough for two people, tied off and well enough away from prying eyes to give them the privacy they desire. He jumps down into the small boat, rips the tarp aside, is pleased to find a pile of relatively soft netting and toss-away fabrics tangled up at the bottom. He reaches up to his companion.

“Come on down here, Baobao.”

Yibo catches him in his arms, and Yibo is on him not a moment later, stripping away cloth and leather and any other offensive barriers between him and his prize before guiding the man down gently into the nest of soft goods. Tanned skin shimmers in the moonlight, and the body below him must be carved from the heavens, too perfect, too delicate, and too much for any mere mortal to withstand. He cannot wait to drag his hands down those hips and over the swell of his ass to dip in between that most intimate of places. Yibo discards his own clothing and weapons at the bow of the boat, a vial of multipurpose oil kept in hand off his belt.

“You’re already hard again?”

Yibo smirks as he kneels over his soon to be lover.

“I have a short refractory period.”

“Sea have mercy! You’re far too handsome, Laoshi.”

Yibo preens from the praise. 

“Mm. Tell me more.”

The taller man laughs once more, at once low and effortlessly seductive while being filled with affection and adoration, and Yibo starts to understand why he never stopped believing in love at first sight even if it can only last for one night.

“Wouldn’t you rather take me instead?” he asks, parting his knees, a most welcoming invitation if Yibo’s ever seen one. He ducks down, answering by claiming those too red lips for his own a hundred times more.

There is nothing between them but the push and pull of sex, the drag of skin against skin, the give and take of pleasure and heat and passion. The boat rocks under the slide of their bodies as Yibo dives into the man’s body determined never again to surface until he’s taken his fill of the offering being presented to him. 

Riding the tides of euphoria, the sighs and gasps below him resonating like a song in the starlit darkness, Yibo realizes he’s never taken such pleasure in drowning.

♆

At dawn, Yibo collects his belongings and dresses all while keeping an eye on the sleeping beauty still slumbering naked save for the robe Yibo pulled over the both of them before they slept. He feels heavy now, plagued with the burden of reality daylight brings. All of the magic of the night before starting to evaporate in the harsh gleam of the sun. 

It doesn’t matter. 

It doesn’t matter that he might like to see him again. It doesn’t matter that he might want to get to know him like a proper lover. It doesn’t matter that Yibo knows without question that he has been struck by Cupid’s arrow, well aimed and embedded so deeply into his heart he doesn’t think he’ll ever manage to pull it out. 

It doesn’t matter because Yibo is a thief at the best of times and a killer at the worst of times and something in between most of the time. A right scallywag as fitting. And this man…

He’s kind and patient and gentle and a force of nature. Funny and clumsy and untamed, and completely unlike anyone Yibo has ever met before, and fuck! Yibo shouldn’t even have touched him for risk of tainting something that pure.

Yibo’s fingers card through soft obsidian tresses once more, unravelling the braid dexterously. He takes the red thread from the man’s hair and weaves a thin bracelet out of it. A token to remember him by that Yibo winds around the man’s thin wrist. It doesn’t mean anything. Not to Yibo. At least, it won’t in a week when Yibo is sailing into another port hundreds of leagues from here with only the memory of toffee colored skin and dark ocean eyes unravelling beneath his touch as company. 

He leaves without ever getting his bedmate’s name. Names are too personal, too tempting to write into your life and keep there, so he leaves without because he knows better than to ever drag someone into this kind of lifestyle, Cupid and his sick sense of fated love be damned. 

♆


	3. Pearling for Oysters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never has Yibo ever participating in a contract barter that felt more like a lover's quarrel than this, and on top of everything else there is a stowaway on the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so stunned and honored by the warm reception this story has received thus far. Much thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter: syuuri, nashapixie, pinkcarnations, Yookay, JiyongxSeungri, yuser, daylight1005, koonantae, JinxTheSphinx, and emma_screams. And many thanks to everyone who has bookmarked or left kudos on this work.
> 
> Not much as far as warnings go for this chapter. Some minor angst and a look into Yibo's past.
> 
> Mood playlist for anyone interested in some tunes to go with the reading:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjrKbTK95gQ&list=PLkja7zaCjRnw8y-8WmHISJCqeFclg2l6G&index=9

Yibo is sitting on the pier whittling his latest carving when Sungjoo and Seungyoun walk back up. He glances up from the small hammerhead replica after a long drag of his blade along its body and sees Seungyoun flipping an ugly leather pouch in hand. Yibo frowns. It’s not anything Seungyoung would ever purposefully buy in a shop, not to mention, judging by the rattling sound within, it is filled with much more coin than Seungyoun should have considering his poor luck in gambling.

“New money pouch?” Yibo calls, eyeing him appraisingly.

Seungyoun smiles so wide his eyes practically close.

“My hand slipped and this guy’s money bag just appeared in my palm. Thought I’d keep it safe for him.”

“One day you’re going to get caught pickpocketing,” call Yixuan from their ship’s deck. “And I will not be there to stop them from cutting off your hand.”

“Well then it’s a good thing I have two,” cheeks the younger up to their captain. He then turns his attention entirely on Yibo, sidling up to the younger and nudging him with his shoulder. “More importantly, our maknae didn’t make it back to the ship last night.”

He waggles his eyebrow suggestively.

“Seungyoun,” Yibo growls even as his mate shakes him around the shoulders as though he’s just won a surfing tournament.

“Soooo, was it good? It was good, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t have spent the whole night with him otherwise.”

“Fuck off!”

“Haha! You certainly did! Come on, Yibo. I didn’t stick my neck out in that barfight for nothing. Give us the dirt. Please! I didn’t get any action last night.”

“How sad for you,” Yibo deadpans back. “May your sacrifice aid you in ascending.”

Seungyoun opens his mouth aghast.

“Wang Yibo! My cruel younger brother who I give so much for to treat me this way!”

Yibo is about to treat him to that punch he pulled last night when Yixuan shouts down.

“Seungyoun, leave Yibo alone and come help me with your damned foodstuffs. The kitchen is a mess again, and you know that is your responsibility.”

“Yes, mom!” Seungyoun sighs as he begins marching up the gangplank. “You’re not off the hook, maknae. I want a full account before we set off.”

Yibo flips a lewd hand gesture at the retreating male before returning his attention back to his carving. Despite the pestering, a fond smile quirks his lips as he remembers pressing his palms flat along the plains of a firm, heaving chest as he took his bedmate from behind at some point between their second and third round. Or maybe he’ll tell his nosy crewmate about how the beauty’s eyes had sparkled with unshed tears as Yibo drove into him for the first time, too overwrought to give anything other than soft, panted praises and encouragements into Yibo’s ear. Seungyoun would need to toss himself overboard if Yibo ever actually did spill the dirt on his activities last night. 

Sungjoo still on the pier lets out a low whistle. 

“Wow, you are in a good mood.” Yibo raises an eyebrow at him. Sungjoo shrugs. “Normally you would’ve told him to fuck off by punching him in the kidney.”

“Hn.”

Sungjoo just laughs before jumping up onto a crate behind Yibo while the younger returns to his project. He’s trying to finish this hammerhead carving before the set out. He just needs to the finishing touches at this point. Sungjoo babbles on about something or other, but he pays the hyung no mind as he works, simply nodding or humming at appropriate intervals when expected to. The dang detailing on the snout is going to be the end of him. Why are hammerheads such strangely shaped animals?

“Holy shit!”

Yibo’s knife hand slips, cutting his thumb open as Sungjoo shakes him from behind.

“What the fuck, Sungjoo! Working with a sharp object here!”

He sticks his thumb in his mouth and can already taste the blood welling from the wound. At least, he didn’t cut his whole thumb off. He elbows Sungjoo in the side, but the man just grips his head and turns him to look at whatever it is that got the man going in the first place.

“Looks like you’ve got a visitor, baby Bo.”

Yibo looks up and nearly goes careening sideways as the sunlight glints off his most recent bedmate’s cascading black hair. Said bedmate who is presently making his way up the dock towards them with a netted sack slung over his shoulder.

“Ssibal, how is he even more beautiful in the daylight?!”

Yibo is sorely tempted to reach over and punch his hyung, but before he can, his, ehem, dalliance is upon them and he is yanking his thumb out of his mouth faster if he were to have just set it on a hot pan. Merciful heavens, he’s smiling that same soft smile that made Yibo’s heart beat a thousand leagues per minute last night. His skin gleams warm and healthy as the sun's rays almost dance around him, glittering like its reflection on the water.

“Hi,” says the beauty, pleasantly with a small wave. The threaded bracelet is still there, right where Yibo tied it in the small hours before dawn.

“Hi,” Yibo echoes, feeling more than a little ambushed. Sungjoo tries to conceal his laughter behind a closed fist. He does a shoddy job of it. “What are you doing here?”

The man shuffles from one foot to the other, eyes, which sparkle like golden honey in the sun, shifting between Yibo's face, the sea, and then back again.

“I," he starts, hesitating, "was hoping to discuss a transaction with you.”

Yibo’s eyes narrow.

“If you’re a prostitute, you should learn to barter your pay before not after, rather than track me down all the way to my ship for money that you will not see.”

Sungjoo physically elbows him in the side with a scathing chide in Korean. The nameless beauty doesn’t seem to take offence though. He just gives a musical chuckle and answers:

“I’m not a prostitute, nor do I want your money. Though it was kind of you to leave the bracelet as a token this morning. I didn’t even hear you leave.”

There is no measure of unkindness or anger in the statement, yet somehow Yibo feels like he is being reprimanded for leaving without giving a proper goodbye. Well, bully for him. What did he expect messing around with a pirate? Breakfast in bed and flowers. Ha! Not likely! Yibo glares at the man who, to his credit, seems entirely unfazed by Yibo’s chilly countenance. Sungjoo glances shiftily between the two before clapping Yibo on the back.

“Whelp! I’ll leave you two to your little lover’s quarrel. I’m sure the captain needs a hand for something or other. Thanks for taking care of our Yibo, stranger. He’s in a much better mood today than normal.”

“Sungjoo,” hisses Yibo as the man ruffles his hair. 

“Be nice, Wang Yibo,” calls the traitorous bastard as the older man all but sprints up the gangplank, waving over his shoulder as he goes. Great! Now he knows his name. Yibo vows right then and there to toss the hyung overboard the next chance he gets. He’ll fish him out, of course, but only after he starts begging and not for a lengthy period of time at that.

“So Yibo, huh?”

Yibo huffs.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Yibo sets his carving knife and sculpture down and pats the wood shavings from his pants, careful to avoid aggravating the cut on his left hand but still the sting of it makes him wince. Fuck! He is going to make sure there are sharks in the water when he throws Sungjoo into the dip. There is blood nearly covering his entire palm.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, Sungjoo’s a right bastard when he wants to be.”

In three quick strides, (damn, does he have long legs!) the man is in front of him, pulling out a thin handkerchief from inside his robes. Slender fingers curl around Yibo’s hand and lift. The touch sets Yibo’s skin ablaze, and he nearly yanks his hand out of the man’s hold, but he holds on with a gentle firmness that is enough to dissuade Yibo from backing away. The man winds the cloth around his thumb methodically as though he were handling something delicate and fragile rather than the calloused hand of a skilled shooter and swordsman. 

Chocolate brown eyes glance in the direction of the hammerhead carving, sitting with the bloodied knife.

“It’s a beautiful carving. You even got the detailing correct on their snouts and the ridging of their backs. Most just see sharks as a set of fins with teeth.”

That piques Yibo’s attention.

“It’s hard to forget the details when you’ve seen one up close.”

“On a hook?” asks the beauty as he ties off the knot.

“In the water,” answers Yibo. “An animal like that deserves respect, not to be fished out of the ocean like a common tuna.”

His tender hums almost appreciatively as he finishes tying off the makeshift bandage. It looks ridiculous wrapped around Yibo’s thumb like a chunky, bloodstained bow. 

“You should be more careful, Wang Yibo. Your hands are precious things, you know.”

Yibo snorts and shakes his head. Precious things look a lot more like the man in front of him, rare gems meant to be tucked away in treasure chests so no one can steal away their shine, and nothing at all like the rough and tumble person that is Wang Yibo. Nothing about him is precious, especially not his hands. Too large, too rough, too scarred from all the shit he’s had to claw his way through just to have the option of standing here today. 

“They are,” the beauty insists. “They make beautiful things.”

Those lithe fingertips glance over the back of his hand and wrist, the faintest of touches that inspire goosebumps to form along his arm. He pulls back before the lump in his throat can become even more prominent.

“Thanks but you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to,” he replies, stepping back and away, having read Yibo’s discomfort.

“Right,” says Yibo, tucking his hand behind his back. “Well if you’re not here for money, what are you here for and don’t tell me you just wanted another taste of my charming personality.”

“And if I did?”

Yibo smirks.

“You’d be disappointed. I’m only charming to people who don’t know my name. Everyone else knows I’m a right bastard.”

The smile returns, and Yibo has a hard time forcing himself not to return it so he looks away instead turning so that his back is to the other man.

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m here for a more practical purpose,” the beauty says. “I’d like to barter passage on your ship.”

Yibo’s answer is immediate.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“You realize this is a pirate vessel, right? You have no weapons on you, you’re pretty enough to be mistaken for a woman, and you clearly have no understanding of men like me otherwise you wouldn’t have come here at all. Sorry, baobei, but take my advice. You’d be better off waiting for a merchant vessel to pass through if you want to leave port. Guppies like you don’t belong on a pirate ship.”

“Thanks for the advice, but I won’t be taking it.”

Yibo’s brow furrows.

“Dealing with merchants is much easier than dealing with pirates for a civilian like you. It’ll probably cost you less too.”

“I’m not interested in dealing with greedy merchants.” 

“So you’d rather deal with greedy pirates?” asks Yibo, indignant. Is this man insane or just delusional? 

“I know I’d rather deal with you.”

“You don’t know anything about me!” Yibo snarls, rounding on the other in a ferocious aboutface. To his credit the beauty doesn’t retreat backwards, nor does he avert his gaze. 

“No,” he answers calmly. “And yet still I trust you.”

“Then you’re a fool,” Yibo spits out, and despite his aggressive posturing, he feels like an absolute ass when the man finally recoils. His thoughts are a mess of surprise, elations, horror, and, of all the stupid things, lust as the man chews on his lower lip, long eyelashes fluttering as he pointedly avoids Yibo’s gaze. Perhaps, he’s shouted some good sense into the man. No civilian in their right mind would ever deal with a pirate, not unless that had something they needed to hide. The wind blows his long hair aside, and Yibo sees with no uncertainty the small hickey he left under the beauty’s left ear just hours ago already turning purple in the light of day.

He watches the man’s chest rise and fall in a deep, fortifying inhale and exhale before he finally speaks, meeting Yibo’s gaze head on.

“Look, I know you think you have me all figured out, but there is a lot about me that you don’t know. ”

So he does have something to hide. Figures. Who doesn’t? Question is whether or not what he’s hiding is worth too much to leave behindYibo kicks the heel of his boot into the boarding at his feet with a bitter laugh, turning to face out to sea, keeping the man in his peripheral vision while lacing his fingers behind his head.

“Am I supposed to be hoping for the opportunity to learn those things?”

“That’s entirely up to you, Lao Wang.” Chocolate eyes flash, possessing a challenge of their own. “But I would appreciate it, if you would refrain from writing me off just because I let you fuck me into near oblivion last night. I can hold my own in a tough situation as you caught a glimpse of while we were leaving the bar.” 

Yibo crosses his arms across his chest and leans back against the crate. He looks down and away in shame for treating this man, who is in fact his senior, like a child. Yibo grits his teeth and resists the urge to keep fighting. He concedes the point, not that that means he is about to give in.

“Fair enough, but that still doesn’t mean I’ll let you aboard.”

“I’m willing to pay, and I doubt your captain will say no to a good investment.”

“Che! I doubt you have enough coin in that sack to tickle Yixuan’s fancy.”

The man laughs, digging into his sack.

“I may not have coin, but I have this.”

In the man’s palm is a black gemstone, dark as pitch, and Yibo’s eyes widen as in the sunlight, a rainbow of colors glitter over the surface.

♆

When Yibo was ten years old, he snuck out of the house for an early morning pearl dive.

Up until then, Yibo had only ever gone out into the coral reefs scavenging for oysters with other children. The group of three or four children were carefully monitored by a small contingent of mothers and jiejies on boats whenever they swam their way into the deeper parts of the shallows on small bodyboards. 

Oyster harvesting was not dangerous per se, but there were always risks to diving in the reefs: eels, water snakes, small sharks etc., but the risk was worth it if they were able to fill up their sacks with oysters and mussels and clams, each hard won finding another lottery ticket that could be cracked open, potentially reveally a nice prize that could be sold at the market for a small fortune. Pearls, for all that they were the waste product of an invertebrate, sold for a pretty penny, and since Yibo’s family was poor, such endeavors were a necessity to their livelihoods.

But that morning, Yibo was alone.

His father was away on a fishing haul, trying to bring in a bounty despite it being the off-season, and Yibo was left with his mother. His very sick, very frail mother, who was going to die if they couldn’t get her the medicine that they couldn’t afford.

So Yibo went out into the surf to brave the reef alone, determined to scavenge as many oysters as he could from the rocky bottom of the ocean. He was a strong swimmer. He could manage. He needed to do this. He didn’t have a choice.

He was doing well. He’d nearly filled his sack. However with dawn breaching the horizon, Yibo knew that he would need to paddle back in soon before the high tide set in, but with his mother’s health on his mind, he went down for another dive thinking he could outrace the incoming tide. 

He misjudged.

Hide tide barrels in with a furious ruthlessness. There is nothing he can do to prevent himself from being carried off by the riptide. He is too small, too young, and too inexperienced to deal with the battering of the waves against his body.

The current pulls him under and thrashes him about. As his vision darkens, all he can think about is his mother alone and still asleep without any idea where her son might have gone. He sees the rock bed hurtling up towards him, and braces for impact. Right before he loses consciousness, he hears something like a song being sung into his ear. He never feels the impact of the rock either as the lack of oxygen makes him black out.

“Yibo!”

Yibo sputters awake to the sound of his mother’s screams. She hovers over him, the dark bruises under her eyes a stark contrast to how pale the rest of her face is. She shouldn’t be out of bed. Why is she out of bed?

“Yibo! Thank the ancestors. You’re okay.”

“Mum?”

The sun is high in the sky. He is on the beach. He must have washed up while he was unconscious, but he was leagues away from shore. The tide should have carried him out to sea. He moves to sit up, and his whole body aches something painful.

“What were you doing out there by yourself? You could have drowned! My son could have drowned. Someone get the doctor.”

“Mom, no! I’m fine.”

“No, you are not, young man. I wake up this morning to an empty house, your father’s paddle boat gone and high tide crashing into the shore hard enough to bludgeon a bull shark. You had me scared to death.”

His mom continues to rant and fuss over him while he opens his satchel. Most of the oysters he harvested are gone, washed away in the surf. He could scream. All of that for nothing. He nearly throws the bag away from him when he spies something shimmering at the bottom of the bag. A gemstone by the looks of it about the diameter of his pinky. Almost like a black pearl, but it shines in a rainbow of colors, luminescent and glittering in the sunlight.

He holds it up to the light and wonders at how indescribably pure it looks. He didn’t pick that up from the reef bottom. He turns it in his hand.

It looks like a teardrop.

♆

That single pearl had fetched Yibo’s family enough money to cover the cost of his mother’s medical expenses. She beat her illness, and for a few more years, Yibo’s home life was the picture of happiness.

But these things don’t last.

Just days after his thirteenth birthday, Yibo would take his first steps to manhood by accompanying his father out to sea on the little fishing barge his father was fortunate enough to call his own. His mother had cried with both pride and sorrow as Yibo took his first steps onto the small ship, a fishing net slung over his shoulder and a pack under his arm. He would hug his mother goodbye and say “see you soon” not knowing that he would never see his home again. 

Three days into their fishing trip, pirates attacked his father’s vessel, and Yibo, the lone survivor of the attack, found himself a cabin boy on a pirate ship. It’s how he met Wenhan, Yixuan, Suengyoun, and Sungjoo.

It’s how he became what he is today.

It’s how, years down the line he finds himself standing on UNIQ’s gangplank looking down at the open palm of a man holding a gem that exactly the same as the one that once saved his mother’s life. The exact same gem that he found after nearly drowning himself in a riptide at the tender age of ten.

“How do you have that?”

“It’s mine,” is the reply, he gets. “Will you take it as payment or not? I hear that you can fetch a good price for it at the right jeweler.”

Yibo shakes his head still not quite believing his eyes.

“You’re not wrong. Fine, you can come aboard. But don’t touch anything and stay out of the crew’s way. If someone asks you to do something, you do it. You get underfoot, you will be stepped on, and it won’t be our problem. We won’t be altering our course for your sake, so you’ll have to just decide when you disembark on your own.”

“Fair enough,” he says, repeating Yibo’s earlier words back to him, and Yibo turns around to board, not bothering to check if the man follows him or not. 

“It’s Xiao Zhan, by the way. In case you were wondering my name.”

Yibo turns once more to give the man an appraising look. Sungjoo is right, he is far more beautiful in the light of day as he is in a seedy pirate bar, and it doesn’t help Yibo’s irritation how open his countenance is. How can anyone spend any amount of time in a pirate port and still look that pure and untouched?

“I wasn’t,” he quips.

“Hn. I see. Here I thought pirates liked to know when they’ve won a bet by having their wagers honored.”

Yibo freezes.

_”You love it, though.”  
“Do I?”  
“I bet you do, and when I win that bet, you’ll tell me your name...”_

“Not all bets are made with the intention of winning.”

“Well, the victory is yours anyway.”

“Is that supposed to be a confession?”

“Would you like it to be?”

Yibo turns away from Xiao Zhan then. Whether he is unable or unwilling to answer, he isn’t so sure, but deflect he does anyway.

“Go on. I need to introduce you to the captain.”

Xiao Zhan’s steps are methodical as he steps up the gangplank. Watching the other man as he follows him up, Yibo realizes that Xiao Zhan’s footsteps are as unsure as his own.

♆

Yibo avoids Xiao Zhan like the plague after that. Seungyoun settles the man below deck, not that he has much to settle, and Wenhan returns with another contract passenger, a short, sour-faced white man named Habernathy who has apparently offered Yixuan an exuberant figure as far as payment goes, half of which was paid upfront. He also comes with an entourage of five other men, one of which is apparently a doctor which was another reason Yixuan had accepted the contract. The other four Yibo doesn’t quite like the look of, but Habernathy is prepared to pay some good money to guarantee their spots onboard, and the extra hands are always nice to have, more hands to split up the work. Trophy fishermen from the look of it. They haul onboard netting and ropes and fishing spears and a huge glass tank that Habernathy frets over to no end until it is carefully anchored down in one corner of the main deck where it won’t be in the way of any actual work.

Finally after all of that, they set sail, Yixuan at the helm. They leave Tortuga behind lighter in their pockets but heavier on their supplies, and Habernathy has done his part in loading them up with enough foodstuffs and supplies to compensate his additional people. Not to mention heavier for the number of bodies on board. Xiao Zhan seems content to mind his own business, though he is quick to oblige when Yixuan asks him to take care of any simple task their captain deems fit to assign him.

Yibo isn’t paying much attention to his own, working through untangling some rope and too busy looking over at where Xiao Zhan is swabbing the deck to notice the warning hiss when a little white paw lashes out and four sharp claws dig into the back of his hand.

“Ouch, what the fuck!”

He ducks down to look inside the tangle of rope to see a scrunched up, furry, round face with large amber eyes glaring at him. The cat hisses at him as though Yibo had done anything to deserve the feline’s ire. Seungyoun, noticing Yibo’s yelp, ambles over and peers into the apparent cat bed that has been made out of their lines.

“Looks like we have a stowaway, mates,” he calls out. “Hey isn’t it supposed to be good luck if a cat wanders onto your ship. Here, kitty kitty-Ow!”

Seungyoun’s hand meets the same fate as Yibo’s as the little devil cat scratches him too.

“Hellcat then. Got it. Somebody get a net or something to fish the thing out.”

Seungyoun is mostly just joking, but after three other people try to get the cat out of the rope coils and fail - one person even gets a nice bite on the wrist for their efforts - Yibo really is starting to wonder if they are going to have to wrangle the little beast out after all.

“Alright, somebody give me a pistol. I’m just going to shoot the dang thing.”

One of Habernathy’s men that got the teeth end of the cat says this, already reaching for a gun being held out to him by his colleague when Xiao Zhan runs over.

“Wait, wait. Hold on. You don’t need to kill it.”

“Look, the cat is not budging and we need those ropes. You want to reach in there and wrestle it out, be my guest. If not, then let the professionals deal with it.”

Yibo rolls his eyes. Yes, the guy is a real professional.

“She’s just frightened is all. Give me a minute, I’ll get her out.”

Sungjoo crooks his arms over Yibo and Seungyoun’s shoulders.

“I’ll bet you ten dubloons he gets scratched.”

Seungyoun shrugs as Xiao Zhan kneels in front of the rope nest while gesturing for everyone to back up a bit. It’s a little odd the way he goes to sit, angling himself sideways on his right hip with his legs half-extended to his left. Maybe it’s so that he doesn’t look so imposing to the frightened animal.

“You’re on. I bet he gets bitten.”

Yibo isn’t quite sure why his hyungs betting on Xiao Zhan’s failure bothers him, but he expresses as much by upping the ante.

“Double it, and he succeeds.”

“Oh ho ho! Our family’s Yibo, betting in his fine doxy’s favor. How chivalrous of you, Bo-di, supporting your boyfriend!”

Sungjoo gets a hard elbow to the ribs for his troubles. He wheezes exuberantly but happily accepts that he’ll be forty dubloons richer in just a few minutes if the growling coming from inside the ropes is any indication that Xiao Zhan is very much about to reap his words. He even preens about it for a bit until Xiao Zhan holds a hand out to the animal and begins to hum. At once, every jaw on deck drops. The man isn’t even properly singing, yet his voice seems to wrap around the entire crew.

The humming seems to calm even the furious animal because the hissing and spitting ceases.

“That’s right. You’re okay. It’s safe.”

Xiao Zhan coos at the animal as though he were speaking to a precious babe, and Yibo watches astonished as a little white and grey peeks out from the rope coils to give a sniff at Xiao Zhan’s fingertips. And then, like magic, the cat is stepping out of its nest and Xiao Zhan is scooping the tiny thing up and into his arms. How, exactly, a creature with such short legs can cause so much trouble, Yibo has no idea, but he feels really stupid anyway as the previously ferocious beast begins to purr in Xiao Zhan’s arms.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Sungjoo looks positively gobsmacked. Yibo slaps him on the chest.

“I’ll take my winning off your hands any time.”

“Oh, screw you, Yibo.”

“In your dreams.”

“Ah, excuse me,” calls Xiao Zhan over to them. He shifts from one foot to the other seemingly uncomfortable or off balance. “But, um, is there some fish about that I can feed her? I think she’s hungry.”

“A cat won’t be much of a ratter if you overfeed it.”

Yixuan comes up behind Xiao Zhan, now, and claps him on the shoulder. Xiao Zhan laughs. It bubbles up out of his throat as an uncomfortable sound, and he leans away from Yixuan as he does it as though he is unused to or not wanting to be touched.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Yixuan seems to understand the man’s body language, so he drops his palm to his side and bows his head in apology.

“That was mighty impressive though, I have to admit. Yibo, why don’t you show Xiao Zhan to the galley? I’m sure he'll find what he needs there.”

Yibo’s head shoots up in mild panic.

“But Seungyoun is in charge of foodstuffs.”

“Yeah, but I’m asking you.”

Yibo doesn’t bother to hide his glare from his captain.

Just hours ago, Yixuan had taken one glance at the gem Xiao Zhan had bartered for passage aboard the UNIQ and agreed to the deal. It certainly didn’t help that Xiao Zhan is so naturally charismatic that Yixuan had taken an immediate liking to him since. Hell, who is Yibo fooling, everyone had immediately taken a liking to Xiao Zhan, and none of them can understand why Yibo is keeping his distance from the man in question.

Yibo feels almost betrayed, especially as his other three brothers snicker under their breath at him. They must have told Yixuan exactly who Xiao Zhan is, and judging by the mischievous sparkling in Yixuan’s eye, he is very much doing this on purpose. What is it? Get Yibo laid week? Or worse? Fuck with Yibo’s lovelife week? Not that he truly has one. Xiao Zhan may have followed him aboard the UNIQ but didn’t mean anything, and the sooner his hyungs get that through their thick skulls the better. Gods above, he’ll become a monk if it means never having to deal with this kind of relentless teasing again.

He doesn’t approve.

“Yibo?”

“Aye,” he gruffs before ambling forward. He tosses his head at Xiao Zhan as an indication to follow before heading below deck without double checking that the man is indeed following him.

He leads Xiao Zhan to the galley.

UNIQ’s galley is small but functional, and considering they just left port, Seungyoun has everything freshly stocked. Dried herbs hang from the ceiling bar, stiff salted rye breads sit piled in a basket, bags of rice and wheat flour lean against the back wall. There are also dried meats and fruits hung on the central pillar. The modest wood oven that Seungyoun uses to cook is unlit and clean, prepped for their voyage’s needs. Glass bottles of various cooking oils line the walls, anchored down with fishing line.

“Let’s see. Seungyoun always keeps a stock of canned fish somewhere around here. Not much more fit for a cat that I can think of. Ah! Here we go.”

Yibo fishes a tin can out of one of the cabinets after digging through a couple for a moment. He then uses a dull knife to cut the lid open.

“Hope he doesn’t mind tuna.”

Xiao Zhan’s jingling chuckle gives him pause. Xiao Zhan’s eyes are closed as he laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, sorry. It’s just that it’s a girl.”

“Oh… Well, I hope her majesty is happy with her dinner.”

He passes the can to Xiao Zhan. Almost immediately, Xiao Zhan scrunches up his nose at the smell of the fish looking for all the world like a fussy bunny.

Xiao Zhan actually gags, turning his head away from the open can.

“That smells awful.”

Yibo raises an eyebrow at that. It had smelt fine when he’d opened it.

“It smells like canned tuna fish. It’s supposed to smell strong.”

“It smells rotten is what it smells like.”

Rotten?

Yibo dips a finger in the can and gives the fish a taste. It tastes just the way it always does. Salty, fishy, tuna-y. Xiao Zhan actually gags at the action. Her majesty, the cat seems to find it acceptable though because she pokes her head out from where she’s buried herself in Xiao Zhan’s robe. Xiao Zhan sets the can on the countertop with a grimace, and the feline hops out of his arms to happily start lapping up the offered fish straight from the can.

Xiao Zhan looks a little green around the gills watching her. Yibo can’t hold back the bark of laughter that escapes him.

“Don’t tell me you’re a picky eater. Once the fresh food runs out, we’ll be living off of this stuff for a good while. I’d hate to see you waste away to nothing.”

“I’ll fish for myself if I have to, but I doubt any good will come of me eating that.”

Yibo shrugs.

“Suit yourself.”

A strong wave must strike the ship’s keel because the floor lurches beneath their feet. Yibo shuffles his feet and maintains his balance easily enough, but Xiao Zhan is another story. He flails trying to keep his feet under him and tumbles sideways right into Yibo. It spirals them both into the galley wall while the cat just chases her little tin can of tune across the counter, still munching as she goes.

Yibo winces as his back meets the wall. Stars burst in Yibo’s vision as the back of his head meets a shelf. Xiao Zhan’s hands slap on either side of his head as their chests, hips, and knees collide with shared groans of pain. As the ship rights itself, Xiao Zhan begins to stumble backwards and Yibo instinctively wraps an arm around his waist to keep him from ending up on his ass. Yibo’s head pounds something fierce, his muscles protesting the usage for anything other than maintaining verticality.

“You are really not good at maintaining your balance, are you?” it comes out as more of a growl than he means, gritting it out through the pain in his head instead of just staying quiet.

“S-sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

Xiao Zhan’s face flushes an immediate red as he tries to scramble away, but Yibo holds fast, screwing his eyes shut as the jostling aggravates his head more.

“Stop moving,” he grits out, head still spinning.

Xiao Zhan stills, and Yibo lifts a hand to check his head. Sure enough there is a nice knot forming at his temple. That’ll probably stick for a few days. Ssi-bal! He better not have a concussion.

Yibo flinches back as Xiao Zhan lifts a hand to his face. 

“What are you-?”

“Shh…” hushes the other man, eyelashes fanning over his cheekbones as he blinks down at Yibo. “Just close your eyes.”

Despite his better judgement, Yibo does as he’s told. Though the throbbing in his head helps with that since even the dim light of the galley lanterns seem to burn the retinas of his eyes. Fuck, he probably does have a concussion.

Gentle fingers stroke over the damaged area, threading through his hair and stroking there in soothing, clockwise circles. A warm, tingling sensation cards up the back of his neck and into the tender area almost as though Xiao Zhan’s fingertips have summoned the feeling. It’s strangely pleasurable like dripping candle wax on his skin or holding his breath for just a few seconds too long under the water. He sucks his lower lip between his teeth and bites down as the sensation intensifies, the rhythm of Xiao Zhan’s tender prods increasing.

Yibo loses track of all sense of time as the heat rises and falls through his whole body like waves washing across the shore of his senses until Xiao Zhan’s touch recedes and his senses clear. Unable to help himself, Yibo reaches up and cords his fingers through Xiao Zhan’s still tangled in his hair. Yibo’s eyes slide open to greet concerned dark chocolate eyes, and if he didn’t have a wall to his back and a solid floor under his feet, he could just fall right into them.

“Sorry about that again,” hushes Xiao Zhan. “You should feel better now.”

Yibo hums his thanks, too blissed out to form any coherent language. Warm body, pretty, pretty face, his own limbs light and airy as if he were swimming. He could just eat those pouty red lips, drag his teeth down that long neck, perhaps suck a darker bruise into the flesh that still bears the faintest evidence of his touch. He could do it. Xiao Zhan is right there, too close and not close enough all at once.

Xiao Zhan retreats from Yibo’s heavy gaze and out of his hold, and Yibo feels unreasonably beriff for it. He stumbles to catch the edge of the counter before he can. Xiao Zhan coughs into his hand. The cat meows loudly and happily up at him, and it’s like a bubble popping, abrupt and unpleasant as the lull that surrounded Yibo dissipates. Logic and sense returning to him, he watches as Xiao Zhan shuffles from foot to foot, wringing his hands. 

“Yibo, you okay?” asks the man, anxiously.

Yibo blinks stupidly for a second before realizing that the pain at the back of his head is completely gone. He reaches a hand up and notes the knob at the back of head is completely gone. Not even tenderness remaining in the area.

“How did you-?”

“Just an old trick my mother taught me. Works like a charm.”

Xiao Zhan cuts off his question with a hurried answer, a half smile on his lips as he animates himself. He lets go of the countertop to gesticulate his point, and nearly topples over for it as the ship rocks again, not as violently as the sway that sent them into the wall but enough that he has to scramble to catch the wood again.

That’s when he realizes that Xiao Zhan’s natural clumsiness is even worse onboard. On land, he might have assumed it was because the man was more accustomed to being on a boat or ship than on solid ground, lacking land-legs as it were, but here, his balance is even worse.

“You’ve never been on a ship before, have you?” 

It comes out like a question, but Yibo already knows the answer, confirmed when Xiao Zhan wilts like a damp daisy.

“That obvious, huh?”

Yibo rolls his eyes, shaking his head. Irritation replaces any of the remaining wonder at his miraculously healed head injury. 

“Unbelievable… Do you even know how to swim?”

The laugh he receives for that question is bright and cheery.

“I know how to swim very well, Lao Wang. I prefer it actually.”

Yeah, he bets. He can’t exactly fall if he's in the water.

“Good. The last thing I need to worry about is you drowning yourself if you go overboard.”

A soft smile pulls at the mole below Xiao Zhan’s lip as he looks down and away from Yibo. 

“Would you dive in after me if I did?”

Long eyelashes unveil ocean deep eyes, a coy gesture it Yibo’s ever seen one, not unlike the one the man gave him as he wound his legs around Yibo’s waist the night before. Phantom pangs of desire stir through Yibo’s spine.

He doesn’t answer Xiao Zhan’s question. There is a secret hidden inside that question he doesn’t want to face yet. One that he is not ready to reveal or deny to Xiao Zhan in the wake of the decision he’d made that very morning about not dragging this unique beautiful man into the dark sea with him. Yet here he is, staring at the object of his affection from the opposite side of the galley, the poor, ignorant beauty having followed Yibo here all of his own accord. And Yibo suffers no delusions about that. Even if he does have ulterior motives for booking passage on the UNIQ, he chose this ship because of Yibo. He’d said as much while they’d been bickering at the pier.

So he turns on his heel and leaves, running away from Xiao Zhan like the coward pirate he knows himself to be. He can feel Xiao Zhan’s eyes wash over his back like an ocean tide.

♆


	4. Yo Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Rum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rum drunk and wrestling with common sense, what better way to fall in love? Cheers! And Gods if that voice were anymore angelic, Yibo would have thought himself running from a god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thank you to those who commented on the last chapter: yesmissjane, daylight1005, yuser, nashapixie, emma_screams, and JiyongxSeungri. Sorry this chapter took a little longer to come out. 👀Looking at the chapter count increase. Ahhh!! 
> 
> Chapter Warnings:  
> Referenced use of Alcohol coping mechanism

Yibo drinks too much that night. Too many thoughts swirling through his head like a hurricane, and all he wants to do is shut them up. 

It works.

Yibo wakes up to a pounding headache behind his eyes, his mouth dry as sawdust. His stomach churns, no doubt looking to punish him for trying to keep up with Sungjoo and Wenhan. He cracks an eye open, sees the too bright sunlight filtering in through the porthole in the quarters he normally shares with Seungyoun and nearly vomits when the world around him spins. He screws his eyes back shut and groans loudly and miserably. That’s when he notices the hand stroking gently across his back.

"Shh… I've got you." 

The voice is soft like a lullaby, and even in his misery he recognizes the owner instantly.

"Xiao Zhan…" he murmurs into the soft warm cushion under his cheek. "What are you…?" He is hushed again. He makes a noise of protest as he feels himself being lifted up and off his nice warm pillow. It's replaced with something far less appealing and cold. The hand at his back presses down.

"Lie still. I'm going to bring you some water."

There is the sound of bare feet padding away and then nothing but the quiet creaking of the ship underneath him until Xiao Zhan returns. Strong but small hands lift him once more and he is settled back against the other man's chest. The rim of a drinking vessel is gently pressed to his lips, and he groans at the prospect of drinking anything.

"Drink slowly." 

Yibo reaches up to grip the mug around Xiao Zhan’s hands and does as he's told. When he is finished, a stick of some kind is pressed into his hands. 

"Chew on this for a bit. It'll help."

It's a root of some kind. Kind of gummy to close his teeth on, but the taste is somewhere between mint and lemongrass and rather pleasant to be honest. It is also rather effective as he finds the churning in his stomach weakens. The respite is enough for him to realize that he is naked in his cot with Xiao Zhan. The naked part isn't so much a problem since he usually sleeps nude but with Xiao Zhan… Top that off with the fact that he has no memory of what he did last night.

"Xiao Zhan!" He shouts, bolting upright. He immediately regrets it as the water he just drank crawls up his throat. 

"I am here." 

Those hands coax him back down. One of them plays with his hair. Turning to the man behind him, slower this time and more mindful of his pathetic self, he grips Xiao Zhan by the shoulders, eyes wide, red-rimmed, and panicked

"What did I do last night? Did we..."

"Shh… it's alright."

"It's not alright! If I did something, if I-"

What if he forced himself on Xiao Zhan? What if- A finger lines up over his lips.

"Hush. You didn't do anything." The man giggles, fond. "You’re just very clingy when you're drunk."

Clingy! Yibo isn’t clingy!

“He lives! Hey, Seungyoun, your twin has rejoined the living!”

Sungjoo’s voice is harsh enough that Yibo’s stomach rolls at the sound of it. Yibo’s forehead thuds against Xiao Zhan’s chest like a drum and he swallows around the bile threatening to rise in his throat. Xiao Zhan just rubs his back some more and coaxes the weird stick thing back between his teeth. He feels like the man is babying him. He doesn’t like that he is in a state fit to need babying, but he is not unappreciative of the attention.

“Bobo! You’re alive,” calls Seungyoun, bouncing through the hatch. “Though I can see that he’s still very much attached to Xiao Zhan. You two have fun last night?”

Yibo doesn’t need to see Seungyoun’s eyebrow waggle to know that it’s there. He flips the bird his way.

“Get lost, YounYoun.”

“Ah, that would be a ‘no’. Damn! I knew I should have kept that fourth bottle away from you,” announces Sungjoo. The pair move in on him. Seungyoun tries to yank the sheet off of him, but Yibo grips it tight and holds firm, while Sungjoo proceeds to smack him on the ass.

“Wake up, Bobo! Yixuan wants you to help the Habernathy group get set up to run nets. You know you’re the best at tying knots.”

“Keep smacking my ass, and I swear, I will puke all over you.”

“Che! That bony thing you call an ass! For shame!” laughs Seungyoun. Yibo throws a pillow at his head. He feels the rumble of laughter from the chest under his head. It’s nice. He curls further into the rolling sound.

“Yuck! Let poor Xiao Zhan go. He has better things to do than nurse your sorry ass back to something that resembles adulthood.”

Just then Wenhan crowds into the small space with a filled bucket of water in hand.

“I’ve got cold seawater. Tell me if I need to soak ‘em.”

Water splashes onto Yibo’s sheets by his feet, and Xiao Zhan surges upwards and out of the bed, clearly not wanting to get a facefull of seawater.

“That would be my cue to go.”

“Wait,” mumbles Yibo as he sinks face first into the bedding. No sooner is Xiao Zhan out of the splash zone than cold water, as promised by Wenhan, is dumped over his head. Yibo lurches onto his feet sputtering and hissing as the saltwater stings his eyes. “I’m awake, you bastards! Now, sod off!”

He at least has the presence of mind to hold the now soaked sheet around his hips lest he embarrass himself further that way, too - not that he has anything to be embarrassed about in that department. He is going to murder his crewmates, slowly and painfully, and when he is done, he will bring them all back to life so he can do it again. They must sense the murder in his thoughts because all three of them skip their way out of the room not a moment later.

“See you on deck, Bobo. Make sure you get some clothes on first, though.”

The hatch closes, and Yibo uses the sheet to dry himself off not realizing there is still one person in the room. 

“Um, I’ll just, uh, let myself out.”

Yibo’s eyes fly open to find Xiao Zhan, pink as a posy, trying desperately not to look at Yibo’s dripping wet body. 

Now, Yibo knows what he looks like. Yibo’s body is a sculpture, carved from the palest of sunstones, and the water drips down the plains of his chest and stomach in sinful rivulets. Toned abs, lean muscle, and skin the color of bleached sand from long hours in the sun. 

A smirk rises to his lips.

“Lao Xiao is always welcome to watch.”

Xiao Zhan meets his teasing gaze head on. He doesn’t flinch, nor does he blush further at the overt invitation. He does however look a bit disheartened by it. He turns away from Yibo, moving carefully over the puddle on the floor to the hatch.

“Lao Wang shouldn’t say things he doesn’t mean.”

Yibo’s eyes widen and he turns away shamefaced.

He does mean it. That’s the problem.

Xiao Zhan’s hand closes over the handle and pulls. He starts to open the door as Yibo gets his senses back together. He’s been behaving like a total ass.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Xiao Zhan pauses on his way out the door. Yibo wraps the sheet back around his waist, he claps his hands together in front of his face, and delivers the kind of bow his mother taught him to use when someone important to him has shown him kindness, a bow that offers respect and gratitude in equal measure alongside a promise to be worthy of the kindness that has been given.

“Thank you, Zhan-ge, for taking care of me. I’m sorry if I caused you trouble last night.”

Xiao Zhan’s expression turns soft, a quiet ease in the lines of his lips.

“None at all, Bo-di. None at all.”

The hatch closes behind Xiao Zhan, and Yibo slaps himself in the face. It’s the least he deserves anyway.

♆

A few days later, Yibo has settled himself atop one of the crates the Habernathy group brought aboard to clean his pistol when Wenhan sneaks up on him.

“Pining from afar again, Bo-di?” Wenhan teases him for umpteeth time in the last few days. He’s been caught watching Xiao Zhan again, the man currently helping one of the fishermen pull in some netting. Habernathy curses as once again the net pulls up empty. Only a few mackerel and snapper to show for their efforts. Yibo still isn’t quite sure what exactly it is they are fishing for, but they leave the nets down most of the day, so to see them reel in this little is more than a bit disturbing.

“You know, if it were me, I’d be on that like a barnacle on a ship. He’s easy on the eyes, has that amazing voice which by the way he still refuses to share with any of us, I’ve asked him three times now. He’s sweet but feisty and can cook a hell of a lot better than Seungyoun. Mazu, if he were a woman I’d have asked him to marry me already for the cooking alone.”

It’s true, Xiao Zhan had taken to helping Seungyoun prepare meals over the last couple of days. It had started with him mostly watching the hyung work, helping prepare this or that for cooking or baking, but after a while, he’d asked if he could actually prepare the food himself. Seungyoun had taken one bite of the fish and rice Xiao Zhan had made and immediately declared himself retired from chef’s duties. They’d all been in better spirits for it. Seungyoun’s food was palatable, but Xiao Zhan’s cooking was actually something Yibo had come to look forward to.

That’s why he is helping with the fishing nets this afternoon, sticking a few choice fish into a bucket for this evening’s dinner before tossing the rest back over the rail to go into the water. He hoists the full bucket in hand and moves back towards the hatch that will take him below deck. Xiao Zhan glances in their direction, well, Yibo’s direction, anyway, and for a split second and not for the first time since they set sail, Yibo feels like he’s been stung by a jellyfish. Yibo looks away so fast the long hook and shell earring dangling from his left ear smacks against his cheek. He shakes it back and adjusts his head scarf, quickly going back to his work oiling and swiping the barrel of the gun. 

Wenhan, who has been observing the whole exchange, lets out an exaggerated sigh. 

“Why do you insist on avoiding him?”

“I’m not avoiding him.”

He had just spent the morning helping Xiao Zhan reorganize the galley, thank you very much. Could he have done that if he was avoiding him? No, and he’ll probably be in there again later to help the man bring tonight’s meal up to the rest of the crew just like he has been doing the last three days. Had Yixuan forced him to help? Yes, but that was beside the point.

“You’re avoiding him. If Yixuan asks me one more time to come check on you because you’ve been staring at Xiao Zhan for too long again, I’m going to scream.”

Yibo glances up at the helm where the aforementioned captain is currently navigating.

“Yixuan needs to learn how to leave well enough alone. So do Sungjoo and Seungyoun for that matter.”

It’s like his brothers are secretly keeping tabs on him all day. He wouldn’t be surprised to find Seungyoun is secretly keeping a tally of every time he is caught staring at Xiao Zhan. Hell, he’s caught himself staring at the man so often, even he is starting to wonder why he is making such a concerted effort to maintain distance and decorum when he apparently can’t look away from the beautiful man long enough to get any work done.

_Would you dive in after me?_

Yes, he would.

Gods, he is so far gone for the man, and being around him the last few days has only made it all the more clear to Yibo that what he felt that night in the bar was not a fleeting lust at first sight. It was something more. And now, with Xiao Zhan integrating himself so seamlessly on board, he is constantly having to remind himself why he needs to fight against it, and honestly, it’s starting to wear him down.

“Yibo…”

There is a fussy mrwing sound from the floor beside them, and Yibo turns to find her majesty pawing at his dangling boot. She brps at him again before rolling onto her back, paws up, belly exposed, looking up at him sweetly like she is asking for cuddles.

Xiao Zhan named the cat Jiangou which is both appropriate, considering how absolutely nutters the animal is towards anyone who isn’t Xiao Zhan, and inappropriate, considering the animal is supposed to be acting as a ratter on a pirate vessel, but hey, who is Yibo to judge? He doesn’t like the little fluff ball anyway. Well, okay, she let him pet her that one time, right after Xiao Zhan had fed her, and it was nice, but other than that, he is more than happy to steer clear of her. Why she is presently pawing at his boot while he is trying to clean his pistol is anyone’s guess.

"You aren’t fooling me again, cat. I remember what happened the last time you tricked me into giving belly rubs."

He has the scratch marks to prove it, too. The animal huffs in apparent disappointment. 

He shakes his head and makes the mistake of looking up to find Xiao Zhan smiling at him. The man looks away abruptly when their eyes meet. Yibo’s mouth quirks up in a lopsided grin. At least, he isn’t the only one having trouble keeping his eyes to himself.

“See, even the damn cat is telling you not to be so dower.”

The expression falls flat off of Yibo’s face, and Yibo is about to show Wenhan ‘dower’ when a ruckus goes up across the deck. It’s Habernathy’s right hand man, Carrow.

“We’ve got a live haul, fellas! Ericson, get ahold of the line. Smith, I need an extra hand here!”

There is a ruckus of activity as the fishermen gather around their equipment. Habernathy plods his way down from where he was speaking with Yixuan at the helm. There is a lot of yelling and general barking of orders among them, and they can’t seem to agree on who should be listened to until Habernathy barks at all of them to clean it up. He also calls for the doctor for some unknown reason.

“Hey, Bobo, something’s up with your man.”

Xiao Zhan has stopped short just as he was about to duck down into the hatch. The beauty looks confused and more than a little concerned as a large fin is hauled over the lip of the railing. He watches as the man’s Adam’s apple bobs around a heavy swallow like his mouth has gone dry. 

Yibo doesn’t respond to Wenhan, but he does keep a close eye on Xiao Zhan who is looking more than a little apprehensive at the net as whatever is trapped inside thrashes wildly, nearly sending the three men trying to pull it up onto their backs. When they finally manage to haul it onboard, Habernathy curses.

“Drats! I was so hoping this was it!”

Flapping and flopping on the deck is one of the largest swordfish Yibo has ever seen. A blue marlin. Approximately eight feet long from the tip of its bill to the end of its tail, the fish is a sight to behold. Any trophy fisherman would crow at the prospect of adding that to his wall. So you can understand Yibo’s confusion as to why the group of fishermen seem so disappointed with their catch.

“Why did you swim so close to the ship?” 

The words are quiet and laced with so much sorrow, Yibo nearly misses Xiao Zhan’s question, but he does catch it all the same. It strikes him as a rather odd question to ask. Yibo has seen swordfish and sailfish brush right up against the bow before. It isn’t unusual. Maybe because Xiao Zhan doesn’t really know much about sailing? But that doesn’t seem right either.

“Well, it’ll make a handsome trophy, don’t you think, cousin?” asks Carrow, coming up to smack Habernathy on the shoulder. 

Habernathy wrinkles his nose as the contact. He stands with his cane to the right of the marlin as it continues to thrash, albeit weakly.

“Please, cousin, I’ve seen much bigger swordfish than that. Get those nets back in the water, now. It’s bad enough that I mistook that thing for what we are actually looking for. Come on, we’re wasting precious minutes.”

“Aye! You heard the man, mates. Get that net back in the water.”

Two of the men roll the marlin over, its fins folding under itself, to yank out the netting. They unfold it and march back to the railing without so much as giving the swordfish a second glance.

“Wait a minute!” shouts Xiao Zhan as he moves across the deck at a hurried run. “Aren’t you going to throw it back?”

Habernathy looks up stunned at Xiao Zhan. It’s almost comical how much shorter the businessman is next to Xiao Zhan’s considerable height. He barely comes up to Xiao Zhan’s chest, and he is so round he is twice the width of the thin beauty.

“Why?”

“It’s suffocating. If you don’t throw it back soon it’ll drown.”

Habernathy, seeming to decide Xiao Zhan is not a threat, shrugs. 

“So let it drown. It’s just a fish. We can use it as bait.”

“It’s not some mackerel or tuna. Blue marlin are… Look, they’re important, and you’ve already said you don’t want it, so throw it back before it dies. Let it return home.”

“What are you some kind of nutter? Fish don’t have homes. They’re fish. If you want it tossed back into the water so badly, do it yourself. My men are busy, and I doubt any of these fine gentlemen who have welcomed us aboard their vessel are going to care enough to stop what they are doing to save a stupid fish.”

Xiao Zhan attempts to plead with the man, but he is ignored, a heavily ringed hand dismissing him as the man disappears back below deck. Yibo frowns at the man’s dismissal of Xiao Zhan, who looks down helplessly at the still twitching swordfish.Yibo sets his work down on the crate, ignores Wenhan questioning expression, and strides forward. He sets a hand down on Xiao Zhan’s shoulder.

“Xiao Zhan, it’s alright.”

“But-”

“I’ll help you.”

“You will?”

Yibo nods, but Xiao Zhan still looks crestfallen.

“We can’t move it with just the two of us.”

Yibo’s hand trails down Xiao Zhan’s back as he nudges him forward.

“Sure, we can. Come on.”

It takes some work between them to lift the near 200kg fish, especially since for the first couple of minutes the marlin continues to struggle quite violently against them, but eventually, the tail fin goes over the deck and the large fish flies nose first into the sea. By that point though, Yibo is a bit worried by how little the animal was fighting back, its tail weakly twitching in his hold while Xiao Zhan dipped its head over the rail. Xiao Zhan leans against the rail watching attentively, whispering something under his breath that Yibo doesn’t quite catch. The more seconds tick by the more fretful Xiao Zhan gets until his whole body seems to reverberate with tension until he sags with despair.

“Damnit!”

Yibo searches Xiao Zhan’s face looking for some inkling of what to do. He’s not good at this, the whole comfort thing. How do you even comfort someone when you aren’t entirely sure what they are upset about?

"Zhan-ge?"

The man in question sighs, the tiny sound resonant with the waves below.

“It’s cruel.” Xiao Zhan’s voice is thick as though with unshed tears. “The way men think they can take ownership of something just because they found it. Even when they don’t even want it, they’ll keep it just to watch it die.”

“Hey,” says Yibo, leaning forward and tilting his head sideways as though indignant. “Not all of us are so bad.”

A small smile quirks at those lips, and while Yibo still isn’t entirely sure how this man has the ability to care so much about a fish’s, albeit a magnificent fish’s, death, he is glad at least that he was able to get this much from him.

“Ah, yes, sorry. You’re right. You’re not like that.”

“Eh,” Yibo shrugs. “There are better men than me out there. One of them is standing right next to me.”

Xiao Zhan giggles though its a mellow sound, not as full of music as normal.

“If you only knew…”

Yibo turns his body so he’s angled sideways to look at Xiao Zhan. With the sun behind him, the beauty’s profile is chiseled in shadow all smooth lines and devastating curves. Yibo smirks.

“If I only knew what?”

Xiao Zhan shakes his head.

“Nothing, Lao Wang. Forget I said anything.”

Yibo resists the temptation to roll his eyes. Like that is even remotely possible. Yibo couldn’t forget anything Xiao Zhan has said thus far even if somebody shot him in the head. Yibo’s smirk widens as an idea strikes him.

"Ah, yes, how could I forget? Zhan-ge has shown me his wickedness."

The lascivious smirk on his face inspires a blush to rise on Xiao Zhan's face.

"You speak like this, Wang Yibo?"

Yibo continues as though Xiao Zhan hasn't protested at all.

“A sinful encounter he could never forget. Though really, this humble sailor has been blessed by the heavens to have been allowed to touch a peerless being."

"Yibo..."

Yibo presses on as though Xiao Zhan didn't just chide him.

"Xiao Laoshi is too pure for this world. Too beautiful and so good he tries to help a swordfish find its way home. Nothing could make me change my mind about Xiao Laoshi. Not even if he told me he was a demon himself forever banished from his home and never able to return.”

The man’s laughter is all the reward Yibo needs for that airy performance. Nevermind that he means every word even if the delivery was more akin to that of an over inflated actor than his usual self. Xiao Zhan calms himself with a low hum before he looks over at Yibo.

“Well, I’m not a demon. At least, I don’t think I am anyway, and no one can ever banish someone from their home. A true home is always ready to welcome you back, Bo-di. Even if you think you’ve lost it forever.”

“Ah, Zhan-ge is a poet, now. His talents are unending.”

“Yibo,” he admonishes.

“Flowery language does not reality make, Zhan-ge.”

A warm hand settles over Yibo’s, and it stuns him into looking straight into Xiao Zhan’s eyes.

“It’s true, Bo-di. Home will always be there waiting for you to find it again.”

Somehow Yibo gets the distinct feeling Xiao Zhan isn't just talking about a physical place.

"Do you know where yours is, Zhan-ge?"

Golden irises slide from the horizon to Yibo's booted feet. They trace up the line of his body so, so slowly. The intimacy of it is somehow too much and not enough, more poignant than sex, more volatile, yet innocent at once. It leaves him wanting, aching for something he doesn't have the guts to name yet.

"I don't know, Bo-di. Have you found yours?"

That’s when the marlin breaches the surface.

Yibo has lived by the sea and on the sea his whole life, and there are fewer sights that he can name more awe-inspiring than the sight of that marlin breaching into the air. The fish’s deep blue scales flash like sapphires in the sunlight, droplets of water spraying into the air only to cascade back down in misty rainbows.

The tail fin disappears beneath the surface, and Xiao Zhan beams brighter than the sun. He steps back away from the rail with a nod of triumph. He offers a squeeze to Yibo’s hand.

“Thank you, Yibo. I couldn’t have saved him alone.”

Xiao Zhan moves to reclaim his bucket of fish, and before Yibo can figure out what he wants to say, the man disappears below deck. For a moment, Yibo wants to go after him, but Sungjoo chooses that exact time to call down to him from the crow’s nest for Yibo to take his shift up there. He apparently needs to piss.

♆

That night Wenhan decides some time after dinner, which Yibo once again helped Xiao Zhan with by the way, that he is bored, so he ventures below deck only to return with his old pipa, inspiring Sungjoo to fish out his paixiao. Seungyoun flips a barrel sideways to use as a drum, and Yixuan grabs some spoons from the galley. One of the fishermen even produces a harmonica to join in. Other than that, most of Habernathy’s crew keep to themselves arm wrestling and playing cards and the like though they certainly take enjoyment in the music.

Yibo sits just outside of the circle of men tapping his foot and offering his voice every so often against Yixuan’s singing. He isn’t drinking much tonight, hasn’t drank much at all really in the last few days. He decided that after having the piss taken out on him by his oh-so-loving brothers for apparently dragging Xiao Zhan all around the deck with him that first night at sea. It had been embarrassing to hear secondhand about his behavior. Talking nonsense about being handed a treasure map and needing to take better care of the treasure now that it had walked onboard with him. Musing aloud about how he was going to keep said treasure from drowning to death the moment something went wrong. He apparently tried to feed the man noodles, climb him like a tree, and take the man swimming only to be rejected at each turn. He’d apparently even whined quite pitifully while propositioning Xiao Zhan for a repeat performance of that oh-so memorable cart ride. And no matter what his brothers did, he flat out refused to go to bed until Xiao Zhan himself volunteered to look after him, humming something that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby to get him to calm down. 

A few members of Habernathy’s groups had looked at him like he was a total nut for the entire next day.

So he sits and sips at the one goblet of rum he is allowing himself for the evening and claps his hands together as Seungyoun finishes singing some sorry ballad about a fishmonger’s daughter. The song ends with a crash of notes and Seungyoun skips over to him looking far too excited for Yibo’s sense of self-preservation.

“Bobo, you should dance next.”

And that is a horrible idea.

“Nah, Seungyoun.”

“Aw come on!” Seungyoun’s pitch lowers as he speaks behind his hand in a faux whisper. I bet if you show off a little Xiao Zhan will notice.”

“Oh, yes!” laughs Sungjoo coming up as well. “Show him how Wang Yibo really gets the boat rocking.”

“I was under the impression he already had.”

Yibo chucks a piece of bread at Yixuan before glancing in Xiao Zhan’s direction.

Xiao Zhan, for his part, is sitting quietly just a few feet away from Yibo amongst a pile of rope and netting. Really he’s lying down on his side more than sitting, an old ledger he found in the galley laid on the floor in front of him, and he appears to be sketching something, a piece of charcoal in one hand scraping across the paper.

As though he can sense he is being spoken of, Xiao Zhan looks up from his work. He seems curious about what it is they are discussing, and Yibo has the sudden urge to hear Xiao Zhan sing, like really sing. Thus far, Xiao Zhan has been content to simply listen and hum along to Yixuan and Seungyoun’s vocals. Yibo has been listening to that humming all evening from across the deck. It’s dreamy and smooth, and it reminds Yibo of days long gone, and Yibo wants to hear the full quality of that voice so he can stop being driven mad by the barely there sound of it. Wenhan has already tried once again to get Xiao Zhan to sing for them only to be rebuked despite the best set of puppy dog eyes he could muster.

Yibo has a feeling he’ll be luckier.

“I’ll dance if Xiao Zhan-ge sings a song for us.” He says it loud enough for Xiao Zhan to hear, and sure enough Xiao Zhan’s left eyebrow lifts.

“Oh? Lao Wang wishes to hear this one sing?”

“Lao Wang very much would like to hear his Zhan-ge sing.”

It’s too dark for Yibo to see Xiao Zhan’s blush in the lantern light, but he hears it in his voice.

“I’m not that good, really,” he protests with a laugh.

“Impossible!” declares Sungjoo. “We’ve all heard you hum.”

Yibo gets up from his place and strides over to the flustered male.

“Come on, Zhan-ge. Let me hear you sing,” he challenges, and the words drip with innuendo.

“Wang Yibo!”

Yibo smiles cheekily and more than a little flirtatiously at the older man. Catching on Seungyoun begins a chant of Xiao Zhan’s name, the rest of the crew, even the fishermen, chiming in wholeheartedly, even if most of them butcher the pronunciation of the name saying Sean instead of Zhan, most of them leaving out the Xiao entirely.

“Xiao Zhan, Xiao Zhan, Xiao Zhan…”

At last the man caves, but Yibo isn’t sure if it is the chanting that does him in or the way Yibo is openly gazing at him, not a chance of looking away any time soon.

“Alright, alright, but don’t get mad at me when it’s terrible.”

“Nonsense! Here, let me accompany you,” says Wenhan, gesturing with his instrument. “I can follow pretty well. Just give me a key to work in.

Xiao Zhan sets his makeshift sketchbook aside and folds his legs underneath him as he sits up. He hums a few notes so Wenhan can pick up the key signature and then, without any fanfare, starts a familiar sea shanty Yibo has heard a few times in various bars but never has he heard it sung quite so hauntingly.

_Upon one summer's morning  
I carefully did stray  
Down by the docks of Shanghai  
Where I met a sailor gay_

_Conversing with a young lass  
Who seem'd to be in pain  
Saying, “William, when you go  
I fear you'll ne'er return again”_

_My heart is pierced by Cupid  
I disdain all glittering gold  
There is nothing can console me  
But my jolly sailor bold_

_His hair it hangs in ringlets  
His eyes as black as coal  
My happiness attend him  
Wherever he may go_

_From Chongqing vales to Louyang  
I'll wander, weep and moan  
All for my jolly sailor  
Until he sails home_

_My heart is pierced by Cupid  
I disdain all glittering gold  
There is nothing can console me  
But my jolly sailor bold_

_My sailor is as smiling  
As the pleasant month of May  
And often we have wandered  
From o'er the ocean far_

_Many a pretty blooming  
Young girl we did behold  
Reclining on the bosom  
Of her jolly sailor bold_

_My heart is pierced by Cupid  
I disdain all glittering gold  
There is nothing can console me  
But my jolly sailor bold_

_My name it is Maria  
A merchant's daughter fair  
And I have left my parents  
And three thousand pounds a year_

_Come all you pretty fair maids  
Whoever you may be  
Who love a jolly sailor  
That plows the raging sea_

_While up aloft in storm  
From me his absence mourn  
And firmly pray arrive the day  
He's never more to roam_

_My heart is pierced by Cupid  
I disdain all glittering gold  
There is nothing can console me  
But my jolly sailor bold_

As the last note falls, a total hush falls over them like a veil. Yibo’s brothers who were toasting their success in finally getting Xiao Zhan to sing have all but dropped their bottles of rum in astonishment. Wenhan, who stopped playing about halfway through Xiao Zhan’s song, sits with his mouth agape. Even the fishing crew have stopped what they were doing to listen. 

Yibo finds that he has drifted closer to Xiao Zhan, now sitting next to him rather than halfway across the deck. He has no idea when he moved, and he doesn’t care. He feels like he is seeing Xiao Zhan for the first time. Time stretches between them, inconsequential, as he holds Xiao Zhan’s gaze, the songspell tying them together as firmly as any sail line. The lantern lights glimmer in Xiao Zhan deep cocoa colored irises captured in Yibo’s own dark, midnight gaze. 

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the strength to look away again.

The sudden splashing sound of a fish breaking the water’s surface off the prow tears the gossamer thread holding everyone’s breath hostage. Yixuan is the first one to clap and he is quickly joined by the rest of the men. Yibo included.

“That was amazing.”

Xiao Zhan looks away and Yibo ducks down to recapture those eyes.

“You should move back, Lao Wang.”

“Only if you promise to sing for me again.”

“That’s very dangerous.”

Yibo’s eyebrow lifts. Not the response he was expected but alright.

“How so?”

Xiao Zhan opens his mouth to answer and then closes it, his lips looking all the more soft and enticing as he waffles for an answer. He chews on his lower lip, teeth tugging at the mole there, and why should Yibo resist the sudden desire to drag the man below deck, again?

“That performance deserves a drink, if I’ve ever heard one!”

Yixuan’s voice brings Yibo further back to himself and he realizes just how close he is to Xiao Zhan, inappropriately close, nearly crowding the man against the crates behind him. He only moves back to check where his captain is. Yixuan is making his way over, a bottle of rum in hand.

“What do you say, Xiao Zhan? Fancy a bit of a swig before you give us an encore?”

Xiao Zhan startles and scrambles his way to standing.

“Encore?”

“Too right, you bloody blighter,” shouts up Wenhan. “You’ve been holding out on us keeping that voice to yourself while these sorry sods sing us in an early grave.”

Seungyoun and Yixuan both glare at the man but several members of Habernathy’s group agree with loud resounding Here-Heres, and Habernathy himself even claims he’ll pay good money to hear Xiao Zhan sing again. Xiao Zhan waves his hands in front of him in protest. Yibo watches him a moment from the floorboards before he too stands. 

“I’m really not that good.”

Xiao Zhan shuffles backwards, inadvertently backing up into Yibo’s chest. When Yibo wraps his arms around him to keep him toppling over, he feels Xiao Zhan’s body temperature noticeably rise.

“Fibber,” Yibo whispers into Xiao Zhan’s ear before setting the man firmly on his feet. He then sways away into the circle of lantern light, boasting louder. “Come on, Zhan-ge. If you sing for me, I’ll dance for you.”

“Who-Who wants you to dance for them, anyway?” Xiao Zhan sputters, and Yibo grins in response. 

“I’m the best dancer on the seven seas. Who doesn’t want to see me dance?”

Xiao Zhan’s eyes narrow as he laughs.

“You’re pride is showing.”

“You’re stubbornness is showing,” he shoots back.

“I’m stubborn?”

“Hm,” Yibo nods. “Your very presence here is case and point to that.”

Xiao Zhan gaps at him like a fish. Seungyoun spits up the mouthful of rum he just took in laughter. Yixuan rolls his eyes at their antics and takes a swing from the bottle.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s a gremlin is what he is.”

“No, no, listen to him. I want to hear Xiao Zhan-ge sing again,” protests Seungyoun.

“Just one more, Xiao-Laoshi,” pleads Wenhan.

Peer pressure is a terrible thing, and they are all wretches for turning their begging on Xiao Zhan collectively, but when it works, it works. Xiao Zhan takes the bottle of rum from Yixuan and upends it over his open mouth. Yibo watches hungrily as Xiao Zhan’s throat works to drink down the liquid. Four gulps of alcohol and Xiao Zhan pulls the bottle away with a shudder and a cough.

“Oh, it’s a party now,” Carrow crows from where he sits watching Xiao Zhan. Sungjoo whoops and then pushes Xiao Zhan into their circle.

“What are we playing, Laoban?”

Xiao Zhan laughs, voice already thick from the alcohol.

“Do you know ‘Laughter in the Blue Sea’?”

Wenhan laughs and starts to play.

♆

It isn’t just one more song. Nor is it one dance, and the spirits flow heartily around the deck. The hour grows late and before long Xiao Zhan, is a flushed, giggly mess swaying about the deck. And this is more than a little surprising because Xiao Zhan really didn’t drink much more than a few mouthfuls.

"You really are a lightweight."

Yibo tugs Xiao Zhan into his lap before the man can tumble to the floor from all of the spinning he's been doing. Seungyoun had challenged him to a spin off and in his intoxicated state Xiao Zhan had readily agreed. He'd miraculously won the spin off, but it didn't seem to be by very much.

"I'm fine, Bo-di," he slurs and then promptly drops his head onto Yibo’s chest.

"Mhmm, yeah, I believe you."

Sungjoo laughs.

"Poor guy. No wonder he didn't want to drink. Captain, you are a cruel, cruel man, making ZhanZhan drink."

Yixuan, head cooked to the side flabbergasted, replies, "How was I to know? And besides he is the one who accepted the drink."

Yibo’s soul nearly leaves his body as Xiao Zhan throws his legs on either side of his hips and nuzzles his face into Yibo’s collarbone. Guess, Yibo isn’t the only one who gets clingy when he’s drunk.

“You know, my mother always said never to go dancing with sailors.”

Xiao Zhan’s speech is slurred and musical like he’s recounting a fond memory. The man giggles, grinding down unintentionally on Yibo’s building arousal. Yibo holds him by the waist to prevent him from moving any further.

“Xiao Zhan!”

“Human tales…” He hiccups, closing his eyes and resting against Yibo’s shoulder. Gods, how is he so adorable?

“Maknae, why don’t you take Xiao Zhan down? I think he’s done.”

Yibi laughs as he carries the inebriated Xiao Zhan down to the galley where he's been sleeping the last few nights. There is a hammock set up between two pillars and Yibo carefully settles him in the fabric. Xiao Zhan mumbles in protest as Yibi pulls away.

"What am I going to do with you?"

"Keep me."

Xiao Zhan’s eyes are open, hazy and alcohol soaked but open and mildly alert. Yibo feels caught like a fish hiding from a shark. But Xiao Zhan doesn’t maintain that level of wakefulness very long, eyelids falling heavy his eyes.

"You can always keep me."

The sentence is punctuated by a barely audible snore. Yibi laughs quietly.

"You’re a right terror, you know that." The fondest of admonitions given as he brushes the hair out of the man’s face.

Yibo removes the man’s boots, refrains from lingering too long over the shape of those thin ankles, and looks around for a blanket to throw over Xiao Zhan but finds nothing. Has he been sleeping uncovered? He's lucky he hasn't caught anything yet. 

Yibo leaves the man where he lies and goes to his own quarters. He has a spare he can lend him. Can't have their current cook catching death, can he?

It takes him a few minutes to scavenge for the damned thing - it was hanging out in Suengyoun's mess of a clothes chest - but find it he does. If he returns to the galley with a slight hop to his step, it's certainly more to do with that than the prospect of properly tucking in the sleeping beauty.

When he makes it back, the galley door is shut. Odd, he doesn’t remember closing it. He twists the knob and finds it locked. He certainly hadn't locked it either, and Xiao Zhan had been in no state to get up and do it himself.

"Get off me!"

Xiao Zhan’s slurred protest is muffled but just loud enough to hear through the door. Yibo’s eyes widen, the sounds of struggle now audible through the door.

Yibo grits his teeth and shoves his shoulder hard into the jamb. The door swings open with a bang, splinters scattering in the air. 

Rage nearly blinds him at what he finds on the other end.


	5. The Eye of the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It never rains, but it pours. And it is in the center of the turbulence where Yibo finds the most peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5, Chapter 5, Chapter 5!!! It goes on and we are officially past the halfway point of this story. Many thanks to all of the comments from last chapter: Snowshoe1404, yesmissjane, syuuri, Murru23, yuser, nashapixie, and athousandfaces. I am working on this almost constantly, aiming to get it all published by Halloween, but I don't know if I can keep that promise at this point. Life is too cray, cray.
> 
> Much love to everyone read, so hoping you enjoy the update.
> 
> Chapter Warnings:  
> Attempted Rape  
> Minor Character Death

Habernathy’s man, Carrow hovers over Xiao Zhan on the floor, one hand around his throat, the other pawing into Xiao Zhan’s top, now askew and falling off his shoulder. Upon Yibo’s entrance, the bastard pushes Xiao Zhan facedown hard.

Yibo closes the distance in a heartbeat and punches the man square in the jaw. The hit throws Carrow across the galley and into two bags of flour. The brute coughs and laughs as he pats the flour from his clothes and face, not yet looking at Yibo.

“Nice punch, brat! Now fuck off, will you! Whores are meant for sharing, and from what I understand, you’ve had your turn.”

Yibo draws his pistol and aims it at the man’s head.

“There aren’t any whores on this ship.”

Carrow raises his hands in front of him.

“Whoa, whoa, easy there, mate. It’s just good fun. I weren’t gonna do nothing bad to ‘em.”

Carrow moves to get up, but Yibo cocks the hammer of his gun.

“I suggest you stay right the fuck there, mate.”

He looks to Xiao Zhan who has crawled backwards on his hands to put his back against the wall. He is still kind of out of it from the alcohol head swaying a little and eyes dilated but sobriety creeps in fast under an adrenaline surge.

“Zhan-ge?”

Xiao Zhan doesn’t answer his call. He doesn’t even look at Yibo, his focus utter steel as he focuses on the man who attacked him. A chill goes down Yibo’s spine at that look, unfeeling and calculating like a shark’s hollow gaze before it strikes.

“Xiao Zhan!”

The aforementioned man blinks, and the strange look in his eye dissipates. He blinks again and it is like he is just now realizing that Yibo is in the room.

“Yibo?”

“I’m here.”

Xiao Zhan closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall with a groan. He curls into himself exposing the side of his neck to Yibo where he sees the imprint of Carrow’s hand already bruising around his throat. Yibo’s eyes dart towards Carrow, and he fires a single shot directly into the man’s hand. Xiao Zhan startles. The man curses loud enough to reach the main deck as he clenches his hand by the wrist.

“What the fuck! You bloody fucking poof!”

Yibo kicks the man in the chest and then swings out a fist, nailing Carrow in the back of the head hard enough to knock him into oblivion. Yibo holsters his pistol and kneels in front of Xiao Zhan. 

“Zhan-ge,” he calls, and Xiao Zhan’s eyes barely slide open to look at him. His eyelids look heavy like keeping them open is a chore. The alcohol in his system no doubt fighting to shut him down while the adrenaline works to keep him awake.

“I’m fine, Didi. I’m fine.” His voice is harsh, his vocal cords nearly having been crushed in the assault. Yibo reaches a hand forward, and much to his surprise, Xiao Zhan leans his head down to nuzzle into his palm. The slighter man sighs, Yibo’s palm nearly big enough to cover the whole half of his face. They stay like that for a pulse, and then Xiao Zhan rasps out:

“He’s done it before, you know. He’ll do it again next chance he gets.”

The iciest sensation drags through Yibo’s sensorium. Of course, he thinks. Men like that can’t wait until they are given something, so they seek to take it by force. 

“I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere. I need to take out the trash.”

He waits until Xiao Zhan nods in understanding before extracting himself to deal with the scum on their ship. Just as he expected, Yixuan and Sungjoo are already heading to the galley as he drags the dirtbag outside. Habernathy is hot on their heels looking for all the world like a frightened chicken.

“Yibo, what’s happened?”

“This sodding pile of rubbish just attacked Xiao Zhan.”

“What?” declares Yixuan.

“You heard me,” growls Yibo.

“Habernathy, anything to say for your man?”

“W-Well, this is preposterous. Why would Carrow try to kill a man whose done nothing to him?”

“He was trying to rape him,” spits Yibo. 

Habernathy turns green around the gills, and the discussion ends with Carrow being tossed into one of the rarely used holding cells in the brig. Yixuan decides he’ll walk the plank the next they are near enough a deserted island.

True to his word, Yibo returns to the galley after locking the cell himself, handing the key to Sungjoo. Xiao Zhan has already picked himself back up and resettled himself back in the hammock. He starts when Yibo enters.

“It’s me.”

Yibo lowers the flame on a nearby lantern as he peels off his boots. He pads his way over to Xiao Zhan, who lifts his head as he approaches.

“Yibo?”

“Mn.”

“What are you doing?”

Xiao Zhan trembles, whether from the cool night air or from the dregs of adrenaline and alcohol in his system, Yibo doesn’t know. Regardless, Yibo doesn’t answer, not verbally at least. He merely pulls himself up and into the hammock with Xiao Zhan, pulling the sheet over them as he nestles Xiao Zhan into his chest.

“Yibo, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m sleeping with you.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m not some fair maiden whose virtue needs protecting.”

“That ship certainly sailed a while back.”

Xiao Zhan gives him the most exasperated look he thinks he’s ever seen on the man. Yibo’s lips pull up at the edges and he brushes the hair out of Xiao Zhan’s eyes.

“Go to sleep, Xiao Zhan. I’m here because I want to be.”

Yibo then curls further around the taller man and closes his eyes in faux sleep. He stays awake, mindful of Xiao Zhan resettling himself in the hammock with a sigh. Eventually the slighter man’s body relaxes against him, and Yibo opens his eyes to check that Xiao Zhan has settled. Eyelashes settled across his cheeks and breathing even, Xiao Zhan is more than settled, comfortably asleep in Yibo’s arms. 

Yibo falls asleep to the sound of Xiao Zhan’s breathing that night.

♆

Yibo wakes to the ship surging up beneath him so violently he is thrown from the hammock. He lands in a rumpled pile on the floor with an oof, shaking himself to realize he is alone. Where is Xiao Zhan?

“All hands on deck! All hands on deck!”

Another shudder rips through the ship and Yibo shuffles crablike to stay on his feet before racing towards the main deck. He nearly barrels right into Seungyoun who is hopping from one foot to the other trying to pull on his pants.

“What’s happening?”

“Capt’n said a huge storm just hit out of nowhere. We aren’t even completely upon it yet, and already the sails are threatening to capsize us.”

They emerge out of the hatch into a violent windburst that sends the two of them rolling head over heels into the rail.

“Come on, gents!” shouts Yixuan from where he is fighting with a line. “Get those sails tied up before we lose the main mast to this bloody wind.”

Yibo bolts for the main mast to help Wenhan, Sungjoo, and a few of the fishermen get it tied off. He climbs up and anchors himself to the netted ropes next to Wenhan by tangling his feet through the lines. He gets a hold of the line and pulls, grinding his teeth.

He scans the deck as he does. There is no sign of his bedmate anywhere onboard.

“Where’s Xiao Zhan? Have you seen him?”

“Aye,” answers Wenhan. “He was up here before any of us were rightfully awake. Your boy was the one who spotted the storm clouds first. He woke up Yixuan who woke up everybody else up here before it started to get really rough. Gave us at least a thirty minute head start. We’d already be sunk if he hadn’t pointed it out.”

“Where is he now?”

“I think he ducked below to find that crazy cat of his just before you and Seungyoun made it up. Then there was something about securing the stores in the galley. I ain’t seen him since.”

“Well, he wasn’t in the galley.”

“He’s down there somewhere, mate. Probably looking for that blasted animal.”

A surge of water splashes up onto the deck sending several crates skidding across the deck.

“Somebody secure that cargo!” 

Yibo, Wenhan, Sungjoo, and Seungyoun manage to wrestle the main sail into folding, and Yibo slides on his belly tying it off while his brother’s move onto the next mast. It is as he is tying off the last bracer that the sky opens up. Sea Gods! You could hardly tell the difference between being in the water and being on the ship by how much water spills from the heavens.

Yibo swings down from the mast to land on deck as another wave strikes the bow, knocking Habernathy, who was trying to wrestle a tarp around his precious tank alone, clean over. The man rolls clean off the edge of the railing and into the sea. Yibo sees him splash into the water.

“Help! I can’t swim!”

“Yibo, can you get to him?” calls Wenhan.

“On it!”

Yibo pulls a line off with him, tying it around his waist as he goes. He dives headfirst into the water, swimming his way to Habernathy just as the man’s head goes below the water. Yibo takes a deep breath and dives. Under the waves, the water is much easier to swim through and he gets a firm hold under Habernathy’s armpits before kicking his way upward.

“Pull!”

“Pull!” echoes Seungyoun, and Yibo is tugged out of the water, a choking and sputtering Habernathy in his grip. Holy hell is the man heavy. Yibo all but throws the man on deck before tying him down to the mast.

“Stay there!”

“But!”

“Stay!”

He snarls at the businessman. He and the rest of the crew have better things to do than babysit a sea slug. Just then a horrible _shinnng!_ sound screeches through the pounding rain and the UNIQ jerks beneath their feet, sending all of them tumbling to the deck.

“What was that?” asks one of the fishermen.

“I think we hit a reef,” answers Sungjoo. “Yixuan!”

“Yibo, take the helm! Sungjoo, Wenhan, get everyone tied down. I’ll go below and check it out. Keep everyone’s head above water.”

Wang Yibo races up to keep the wheel from spinning out of control, lest they go careening towards their deaths while Yixuan disappears below. It takes both Yibo and Seungyoun to keep the helm still, and the storm only continues to worsen around them. Yibo just grits his teeth, closes his eyes, and prays.

♆

It feels like eons pass before the storm’s rage calms. Yibo feels waterlogged and drowned. His muscles heavy as lead as he unties the safety cabling around his waist. Yixuan calls for a headcount, and Sungjoo offers him some water, and Yibo guzzles it down like a lifegiving ambrosia.

“Fuck, that was a mean typhoon. And we only got the outskirts of it. Give your beau a kiss from me for watching the damned horizon while the rest of us whiled away like a bunch of lazy louts.”

Yibo chuckles for a moment before he realizes that Xiao Zhan is still unaccounted for.

Through the entirety of the storm, Yibo never once saw Xiao Zhan set foot on deck. Yibo checks everywhere, the galley, the crew’s quarters, the brig, even the loo, and there is no sign of Xiao Zhan or even Jianguo anywhere.

“Xuan-ge, where is Xiao Zhan?” Yibo asks back on the main deck, knowing Yixuan was conducting a head count not ten minutes before.

Yixuan looks around surprised.

“Below deck, I guess. Why?”

“I can’t find him anywhere.” 

“Well, I never saw him up here during the storm, so he can’t have gone overboard. Though I didn’t see him down there when I sealed the hull either.”

“You sealed the hull?”

“Yeah, we were taking on water through a blown board. It should be fine for now. We can repair it at the next port.”

“Yixuan!”

“What?”

Yixuan turns wide eyes on Yibo.

“You sealed the hull!”

Yibo takes off running, completely ignoring Yixuan’s dazed expression.

The hull where Jianguo, despite the fact that she has yet to catch anything, likes to go hunting for mice, where Xiao Zhan had probably gone to fetch her to make sure she was secured during the storm. But Yixuan sealed the door hours ago which probably means that portion of the hull is completely underwater by now. If Xiao Zhan was in there when it was sealed, if Yixuan hadn’t realized he was down there, there is no way he could still be alive.

Sure enough, Yibo finds the dividing door sealed shut and he sinks to his knees seeing the way water has spilled through the cracks to dampen the floorboards on his side. There’ll be no way to open it until they’ve docked and repaired the damage. He doesn’t have to wonder the fate of anyone who may have been caught on the other side.

He clenches his fists and is about to punch the floor when, BANG, BANG, BANG, something hits the inside of the latch head. Was something drifting around in the water? The pattern repeats, and Yibo shakes himself.

“Can someone open the door!?”

Impossible…

Yibo blinks, struck dumb momentarily before the banging repeats again. Then he is up and moving to quickly open the hatch. 

“Mrrow!!!”

Where he expects a rush of water to pour out, he instead receives a very wet, very angry munchkin cat as Jianguo zooms through the narrow opening and towards the markedly dryer parts of the ship. The door opens further and Xiao Zhan steps out. The man is barely even damp.

The man’s lips quirk up on one side and he has the nerve to look embarrassed as he scratches the back of his neck. 

“Yibo! Thanks. I was afraid we would be down there for-.”

Yibo cuts Xiao Zhan off, fists clenching into the fabric of the man’s collar as he rams Xiao Zhan into the nearby wall.

“Ow! What the hell, Yibo!”

Yibo is furious.

“Are you sick! Running into a breached part of the ship to rescue an ill-tempered cat. Yixuan didn’t even know you were down here. He locked you inside a coffin and you don’t even realize it.”

“Yibo-”

“Shut up! You don’t get to justify yourself. You could have drowned! I knew I shouldn’t have let you step even one foot on board. Do you think this is a game? Is that why you decided to follow me out of Tortuga? We had one good night together, and you think that gives you the go to tag along like a lovestruck fish wife. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know anything about sailing. You don’t know anything about this lifestyle. What were you even thinking coming aboard a pirate ship?”

Yibo gives one last shove to Xiao Zhan’s shoulders before backing away. He runs his hands through his hair as his brain catches up to his mouth. He sighs and starts again at a more reasonable volume.

“Xiao Zhan-”

“Lao Wang has made himself very clear,” Xiao Zhan cuts him off, voice carefully measured. Yibo whirls around to look at him only to find Xiao Zhan refusing to meet his gaze. “This one apologizes for offending him and assures him that he’ll be rid of this one’s presence upon our next arrival to port.”

Yibo winces as Xiao Zhan turns to walk away. The finality of it drives him into a panic.

“Zhan-ge, wait,” he shouts, catching the man’s hand in his own.

Xiao Zhan halts so quickly he completely loses his balance. Yibo lunges forward to steady him, catching him around the biceps. Xiao Zhan jerks away as though burned.

“What?” he snaps at Yibo.

Yibo backs up to a respectable distance as a knot forms in his throat; Yibo grits his teeth and speaks through it anyway.

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. Don’t leave. I just…”

“You just what? Can’t handle me being here because I was just supposed to be a- what’s the term again? -a notch on your bedpost. I’m sorry my presence is such an inconvenience for you. I should have realized. You must leave hand woven trinkets for all of your conquests,” he snarls, flashing the red bracelet still tied onto his wrist where Yibo left it before disappearing the morning after their tryst.

“I do not,” Yibo protests. 

“Oh? I must have been a really good lay then.”

Xiao Zhan’s dismissal comes with another turn of his head as he makes to leave. That’s not it. That’s not it at all, and it’s not like this is the first time Yibo has had to work with a one night stand after the fact, but Xiao Zhan was never just a one night stand was he? And the prospect of losing him suddenly seems a whole lot worse than it had before. Yibo grinds his teeth together, clenching his fist, and nearly bursts when the confession spills from his mouth like a bomb.

“I was scared, okay!”

Xiao Zhan stops and stares back at him stunned.

“But-”

Yibo cuts him off before he can fully voice whatever question he was planning to ask.

“The moment I saw you in the bar, I knew. I-I’ve never connected to someone the way I’ve connected to you. I’ve never… I’ve never felt like this about anyone, and it frightens me.” Yibo snorts. “Gods, I’ve never been so frightened of something my entire life. Fuck! I thought you were dead just now, and I’ve never felt so out of control in my whole life.”

Yibo leans sideways into the wall, his hand coming up to wringe at his face and hair. He screws his eyes shut and prays for something, he has no idea what but something to make this easier.

The silence stretches between them, and Yibo risks opening an eye to peer over at Xiao Zhan. The other male is worrying at his lip, seemingly mulling over this information. Maybe this is how Xiao Zhan finally comes to understand that Yibo is a total nutcase who, despite every bad thing that has ever happened to him, still believes in love at first sight. Maybe he will figure out that Yibo is a walking bad omen and will make the right decision to avoid any further association between them. Maybe Xiao Zhan is deciding that he doesn’t care that much and will indeed disembark at the next port. It would be better that way. Yibo knows that to his very marrow. He just doesn’t know if he would survive it.

“Why does it scare you?”

Xiao Zhan’s voice is closer, somewhere to his right. The steely tone that was there before is gentler.

“I’m a pirate, Zhan-ge.” 

There is a lot to unload in that statement. Yibo has seen things, horrible things. Cut out the close calls with nature and the law and other pirates, and still there is a perilous ugliness in this lifestyle that cannot be denied. Men who pillage and take what is not on offer. Others who try and hold on to something only to destroy it whether intentionally or not. Lovers cast out to sea to die together. Cursed love stories that only end in tears.

“I’ve killed people, I’ve ruined lives. I’ve lied and cheated and stolen, and I will keep doing so time and time again so long as the world continues to turn. I’m not some handsome prince or tragic hero that you can sail into the sunset with. It’s more likely I’ll end up dragging you to hell with me, and apparently, I’m not even good enough to let you walk away. That’s the kind of greedy bastard that I am. Che! Look what almost happened today because of a fucking typhoon.”

“I don’t think the weather has anything to do with your being a pirate, didi.”

“That’s not the point, ge! The point is that I can’t give you the life you deserve. You don’t deserve to live your life cursed”

Xiao Zhan laughs. 

“You think that’s funny?”

Xiao Zhan's laughter doesn't abate. It’s not a real laugh. It’s too bittersweet, but it pulls Yibo from his self-deprecating thoughts, anyway.

“Aye, didi. What am I going to do with you?”

Excuse him!

Something on Yibo’s face must be absolutely fucking hilarious because when Xiao Zhan meets his eye, he laughs harder, brighter. It’s melodious and full, similar to how he laughs when he’s playing with Jiangou. Similar to how he laughed that night at the bar when Yibo dragged him out dancing only for him to trip over his own feet and right into Yibo’s lap. Similar to how he laughs with Yibo whenever the pirate forgets himself enough to let him in.

“Why are you laughing? This is serious.”

“I know. I know, Bo-di. I’m sorry, it’s just… I suffer no delusions about what and who you are.” Xiao Zhan’s smaller hands link themselves into his as best as they can, gripping his thumb and forefingers more than anything else. “I know you don’t know very much about me, yet, and I want to change that, but I’ll be brutally honest with you. It scared me, too, falling in love with you.”

“Zhan-ge,” Yibo starts, but Xiao Zhan shakes his head.

“Just let me finish, okay? Then you can say or do whatever you want, but it’s my turn, alright?”

Yibo nods.

“All my life I have been scared of being trapped and caged, of having my freedom taken away from me, and I was always taught that falling in love was a surefire way to forcible shackle yourself, chaining yourself down until you drown in your own tears and forget you were ever your own person. They said, it’s worse when the person you love doesn’t love you back. That I could die of a broken heart if I ever let myself go like that.

“So I swore that I would never fall in love, never let myself get tied down and imprisoned by my own heart.”

Xiao Zhan’s eyes soften as they gaze down at Yibo.

“But then I met you. I met you and it happened anyway. Not right away. I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but it did happen, and the feel of it is so, so incredible that I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to bond with someone, to let myself love someone so long as that someone was you. So I decided that I would take the risk, and here I am, being yelled at by a brat six years younger than me for worrying him so much he couldn’t keep himself from lashing out because apparently the thought of me drowning to death is too horrible for him to bear. Believe you me, if that is the curse the I must bear for loving you, hehe…” He trails off leave the sentence unfinished. “There are far worse curses to suffer, Yibo.”

Xiao Zhan’s expression is the softest that Yibo has ever seen as though he is truly touched by Yibo’s near violent overreaction to the situation. Those warm eyes wash over him, seeing him as though Yibo is not a murderer, like he is just a man trying to find his way in this world as best as he can. The gaze is heavy on Yibo’s heart, and as the man lifts a hand to caress Yibo’s face, it flutters like a baby bird trying to fly right out of his chest.

“I know I don’t know you, Wang Yibo. I know there are a lot of things about you I will probably never know, and there are also a lot of things you don’t know about me, but... I- I’d like to share them with you one day if you’d have them. I think you're the only man in the whole world I would be willing to share them with.”

Yibo surges upward, lining them up hip to hip as he finally, finally stops fighting himself and kisses his Xiao Zhan, his odd, beautiful, steadfast soul mate, who he feels like he has known for years rather than mere days. How did they get to this point, Yibo’s tears streaming down his face as he tries to consume from the inside out this man who somehow deems him worthy, not just as a onetime lover but as a partner, someone to walk towards the future with, a lifelong companion.

Xiao Zhan’s eyes are closed by the time he pulls away from their kiss, lips swollen and pink, nearly bruised from the ferocity of Yibo’s spillover of want. Yibo tucks his face into Xiao Zhan’s neck, brushes his nose into the collar of Xiao Zhan’s hanfu.

“I’m sorry, Xiao Zhan.”

Xiao Zhan coaxes his head up, sweeping away his tears with cool fingertips. He swipes his lips against Yibo’s in a chaste meeting before ducking into a peck that immediately makes Yibo smile.

“I know. It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it. Not that part anyway” Xiao Zhan’s eyes sparkle even in the staunch darkness of the belly of the ship. He toys with a button on Yibo’s coat, spinning it between his fingertips, before pressing his palm flat against Yibo’s chest, right over his pulse. He looks up at Yibo through his lashes. How he manages that despite his superior height Yibo can’t even begin to understand but he does. “You, know in hindsight, it’s kind of cute.”

Yibo’s eyes narrow, the heat in them far from the earlier anger he was feeling.

“I’ll show you cute.”

He guides the laughing Xiao Zhan back up against the wall. Xiao Zhan’s hands come up to his shoulders, but Yibo grasps his wrists one in each hand before pressing them against the wall above his head. Xiao Zhan’s laughter is cut short by Yibo’s possessive kiss, his tongue snaking its way into the taller man’s mouth as he shifts Xiao Zhan’s dainty wrists into one hand holding them there. Long black hair cascades over Xiao Zhan shoulders as he throws his head back putting on display the angry bruises still marring the golden flesh there. Yibo nips and bites his way down the long column of his throat determined to erase those marks, covering them up with his own.

“Yibo, please,” he hears as he worries at Xiao Zhan’s collarbone with his tongue and lips. He pulls away to find a nicely pinkening hickey in his wake.

“Please, what, Zhan-ge?” he asks against the tender skin under Xiao Zhan’s ear as he snakes a hand into Xiao Zhan’s lower robe, finding the turgid flesh hidden beneath.

“Nhnn! Yibo!” the man cries and Yibo begins a steady up and down stroke over his member. The beauty thrashes his head from one side to the other as Yibo’s thumb dips into the tiny slit at the top before jerking his hand fast around the head. “Please!”

“What do you need, Baobao?”

“Just you. All of you.” he hushes as he thrusts up and into Yibo’s hold. The good, the bad, the ugly. All of him yearned for in those bottomless eyes, dilated with lust and flared with passion. Depthless in their desire for him, his corporeal self and the intangible soul within him.

“You have me. You’ve had me since the day we met.”

Xiao Zhan palms at the front of his trousers. He leans forward, licks at the shell of Yibo’s ear.

“Then fuck me, Yibo. Possess me, take me, consume me. I’m yours.”

Yibo presses himself wholly between Xiao Zhan’s legs, bare feet lifting off the floor as Yibo folds each limb into the crook of his elbows. The hanfu falls open like a silky waterfall around Xiao Zhan’s hips and thighs. An oil-slicked finger finds the other’s puckered entrance, circling the rim before the long digit dips inside. 

Prep is hasty at best. Yibo feeds his fingers in, rapacious and near thoughtless as he plunders in deep to stab into the treasure trove deep within that has Xiao Zhan crying out in ecstasy, three fingers thrusting and stretching him open, readying him for more.

Before long, Xiao Zhan’s legs wound tight around his hips, hands clenching at Yibo’s shoulders, Yibo replaces the digits with his cock in a fluid thrust that rocks their worlds topside. Xiao Zhan bounces with each of Yibo’s thrusts. The banging of their bodies against the ship’s keel almost undoes Yibo on its own, Xiao Zhan’s dulcet moans a whole ‘nother obstacle to clench against lest he spill before he is good and ready to do so, but nothing can distract him from the tight, damp heat of Xiao Zhan’s body pulling him in and savoring him like a fine dish.

His nerve-endings sing, alight with the slide of their bodies and the friction of Xiao Zhan’s impossibly tight, silky walls. Yibo digs his fingers into the soft yet strong flesh of Xiao Zhan’s thighs, the clothes sticking to him as the sweat and water from the rain pastes them to his skin. Xiao Zhan’s arms wind around his neck and hold, pressing down so that the man can move with him, impaling himself on Yibo’s length as though possessed by some carnal spirit.

Xiao Zhan laves attention to Yibo’s neck, his breath hot and humid against Yibo’s skin.

“Yibo, ah!”

Yibo bites down on the tender flesh between the man’s shoulder and neck. Delicate fingers thread through his hair, coax him up, and Yibo reclaims Xiao Zhan’s mouth, delving deep as the ship rocks violently beneath them. Yibo sways sideways, never losing connection with Xiao Zhan, as he responds to the still turbulent sea lashing at the ship. A rum barrel stands at the perfect height near them, and Yibo slams Xiao Zhan down atop of it. Xiao Zhan scrambles to find purchase somewhere, anywhere, fisting into Yibo’s coat as Yibo cages Xiao Zhan’s waist between his hands and begins to brutally pound into him.

Xiao Zhan back arches along the curve of the barrel as he comes with a shuddered scream. Yibo’s hand barely closes around his cock before Xiao Zhan spills across Yibo’s palm and his own thighs, held aloft braced against Yibo’s chest.

Xiao Zhan’s muscles bear down around Yibo’s still thrusting cock, twitching and trembling as his orgasm crests and recedes. Yibo’s climax washes through his body like a tide, and he throws his own head back, burying his whole length deep into Xiao Zhan’s willing open body with a shout as Xiao Zhan milks him for all he’s worth.

“Xiao Zhan!”

Yibo collapses boneless and breathless over Xiao Zhan as the waters drain from him. Soaked in euphoria and drenched to his core with the inexplicable awareness of being known, Yibo closes his eyes and listens to the rhythmic thumping of the heart beneath his ear. A song of its own, and one he would never tire of listening to. He groans as he lifts his head, snaking his way up and over to find Xiao Zhan’s lips for a blissful kiss.

Yibo groans low in his throat and Xiao Zhan breathes a soft sigh into the air.

“Xiao Zhan, let me keep you.”

Xiao Zhan hazy eyed and flush with the gentle wash of ecstasy, leans up to kiss Yibo. The pirate moans into his lover’s mouth all at once the torrent of emotions within him calm as a summer breeze. Xiao Zhan pulls away far too quickly. His words fan cool over Yibo’s heated skin.

“If you want me, Yibo.”

“Heh, what pirate in his right mind would say ‘no’ to treasure when it’s right in front of him?”

Xiao Zhan raises a pointer finger to his chin, looking up at the ceiling in flirty contemplation.

“Hmm, I can think of a pretty stubborn one actually.”

He gives Yibo the side eye.

“Well, even fools can see the error of their ways.”

He cuts off Xiao Zhan’s laughter with his lips.

“Yibo! Did you find Xiao Zhan?”

They startle away from each other as Yixuan rounds the corner, Yibo barely getting his pants tied back up and Xiao Zhan’s hanfu back in order before his captain appears before him. He nearly barrels backwards when he sees the state of them. 

“Yes! He’s fine,” he snips, tugging Xiao Zhan’s collar back together.

The man tsks looking the two of them up and down before breaking out in a hearty laugh. Xiao Zhan’s blush is positively incriminating. He steps into Yibo’s vicinity to whisper that he is going to check on the galley and Jianguo before walking carefully away. He seems unsteady on his feet again, whether that is from Yibo’s virility or not is anyone’s guess, but Yibo has to resist the temptation to pat him on the ass as he goes.

“Well, I suppose he is fine, isn’t he?” laughs Yixuan.

He rounds on Yixuan.

“No thanks to you. You locked both him and Jiangou in the hull for no reason. It didn’t even flood.”

Yixuan frowns at that.

“That’s not possible. I saw the water seeping in. The whole room should be underwater by now.”

“See for yourself then.”

Yixuan frowns before striding past, Yibo following on his heels. Yibo stops at the hatch and gapes at the state of the hull. Everything is tossed about as though there was indeed a flood. Even the ceiling is damp. The only water to be found is but a few inches deep, barely coming up to his calves at the deepest places.

Yibo wanders over to where Yixuan remembers the breach occurring. There is indeed a break in the hull, but no water is presently leaking in. He ducks his head underwater and finds the hole clogged up with barnacles, seaweed, and a strange inky, goo-like material.

♆

The day is spent making repairs to the ship. Yixuan, seeing the clogged up break, decides it’s best to leave it be until they reach port. He doesn’t question it though, just lights some incense in his study later, offering up some fresh fruit to the sea for her mercy. Curiosity is for inviting trouble. Gratitude is for knowing they will not sink anytime soon.

What’s more curious, anyway, is the apparent death of the imprisoned Carrow. Habernathy is up in arms about it accusing one of the UNIQ of killing him during the storm. Yixuan settles the matter by asking the good doctor to perform an autopsy, assuring the businessman that if there is any evidence of foul play, that he will be compensated for it appropriately. When the doctor confirms the man’s cause of death, however, it’s an impossibility that cannot be explained.

There is no additional gunshot wound. He wasn’t strangled. There isn’t even any bruising on the corpse to indicate he was beaten or even remotely thrown about. For a moment Dr. Han wonders if it was a heart attack that did him in, but then he cuts open the man’s chest. His lungs are flooded with seawater despite the fact that not a drop of water was found around the corpse. 

There are murmurings about a curse among the fisherman, and Habernathy, suspertitous fellow that he apparently is, affirms that, if that be the case, Carrow got what he deserved.

Drowned above water. Cursed by the sea itself for his lusts.


	6. Fish Out of Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ignorance is bliss. It blankets over you like a tide until you are forced to come up for air, and then SPLASH! The world as Yibo knows it crumples.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ✨🧜🏼♂️✨  
> We're back a mermaid story! Chapter 6, and I'm sure you will all find it to be a long awaited chapter. As always many thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter: nashapixie, Yookay, emma_screams, JiyongxSeungri, syuuri, yesmissjane, Snowshoe1404, yuser, athousandfaces, FeatheredMind, and kitaekim.
> 
> Chapter Warnings:  
>  Violence  
>  Minor Character Death  
>  Possible Body Horror - Not really though but some people might think so.

Yibo is fucking Xiao Zhan. 

No...

Yibo is making love to Xiao Zhan.

That’s the better description. Better to describe the way he fucks into Xiao Zhan’s body so torturously slowly. Better to describe how he drags every centimeter of his engorged length along Xiao Zhan’s inner walls. Better to describe how he uses his body and his hands to see Xiao Zhan. How he listens to Xiao Zhan’s moans with his lips and fingertips. How he tastes him with the tenderest of promises murmured against sweat dampened skin.

Yibo makes love to Xiao Zhan in the small hours of the morning. Waking up hard, already inside the other man, still wet and open from their last union, had presented Yibo with a temptation he had been unable to resist, rocking Xiao Zhan awake with gentle rolls of his hips and the gliding of his hands down that smooth chest until the telltale hitch in the man’s breath and his stiffening member told him everything he needed to know.

The weeks following the storm find Yibo and Xiao Zhan practically joined “near the hip” according to Sungjoo who gags comedically everytime they walk out on deck together after having disappeared for god knows how long. Yibo doesn’t give a fuck. Not when Xiao Zhan is always so willing, so eager, and so goddamn beautiful when he comes undone, Yibo has zero motivation to keep his hands to himself.

“Mm, haah! Yibo…”

Xiao Zhan whispers into the ether. Yibo presses himself further into Xiao Zhan’s back, hands threading in opposite directions as he cradles Xiao Zhan’s jaw in one while the other seeks out the man’s root, curving around the base and sliding sensuously up the length of it.

“Baobao?”

Xiao Zhan tilts his head backwards, eyes closed, lips parted, and Yibo takes the offering, drinking from his love with voracious cupidity. Yibo rolls his hips with a little more force, and Xiao Zhan’s reaction arches him further into Yibo, pressing himself down to the very root of Yibo’s member. Filled to the brim and stretched beyond reason, Xiao Zhan writhes, undulating his hips for more of Yibo.

“Please, I want to see you.”

Yibo groans when the cool air hits his dick as he pulls from Xiao Zhan’s body, rearranging them so Xiao Zhan is on his back, one leg tossed over Yibo’s shoulder, the other pulled up to his chest and held their by Yibo’s solid grip on his inner thigh. Yibo resheathes himself slowly, and Xiao Zhan, oversensitive and wanton, throws his head back even as his hands reach blindly for Yibo’s chest and face.

The pirate laces their fingers together, pressing Xiao Zhan's down in the folds of the sheets as he continues his slow, methodical drive in and out of Xiao Zhan’s body.

“Yibo.” His name falls from Xiao Zhan’s lips like a prayer, but Yibo is the worshipper, trailing kisses and bites and tonguing his way over every bit of exposed skin he can reach. Yibo hums low in his chest as Xiao Zhan rocks to meet him. 

There is no goal in this coupling. He isn’t wild with lust. He isn’t chasing an orgasm. He is not taking of Xiao Zhan’s body. He gives all of himself with the sole intention of being as close as possible to Xiao Zhan, enfolding him, ensnaring him, pulling him into his very being. He could stay like this forever, Xiao Zhan sweat and musk on his tongue, his heat surrounding his core, his voice a song that begins and ends with Yibo’s name.

Dawn is just starting to peek in through the portholes when his body betrays him. He climaxes hard, tumbling down and down into Xiao Zhan’s ocean as the man pulls him in tighter, crying out his own release. It sounds like the waves crashing into a cliffside as he spills between their bodies. Xiao Zhan’s arms wind around Yibo’s back, stroking him where he has fallen, face smushed into Xiao Zhan’s chest, bones like jelly and muscles protesting the exertion, but happiness thrums in his blood and there is no price he would not pay to feel this every day, every morning, every hour.

When Yibo finally wills his eyes to open, it is to take in his quarters which have effectively become their quarters, Seungyoun vacating to bunk with Wenhan in deference to “young love” and not wanting to know about their “icky” activities. On his workbench are his usual wood carvings and sculptures, an unfinished one of a sea turtle lies next to his carving knife waiting to be picked back up. Not far from them is Xiao Zhan’s sketchbook, the charcoal sitting on top. Xiao Zhan’s netted sack hangs from a peg in the wall, next to Yibo’s coat and boots. Yibo’s sword rests on the floor atop Xiao Zhan’s discarded hanfu, left haphazard on the floor as they had both been too excited to dive into each other’s bodies the night before to care where the items landed.

Yibo blinks slowly, sighing into Xiao Zhan’s skin as he lifts himself carefully up and out of the other’s man’s embrace. The cum on their stomachs has grown sticky, almost itchy, so Yibo rolls himself out of bed, despite Xiao Zhan’s protests. A short jaunt across the room later, and he returns with a dampened wash cloth, which he runs across Xiao Zhan’s torso. Xiao Zhan giggles at the treatment, batting away Yibo’s hands. “That tickles!” But Yibo persists, straddling Xiao Zhan to hold him down as he cleans all the spunk from his belly. Feeling adventurous, he fishes Xiao Zhan’s legs out from under the sheet and spreads them. 

“Ah! Yibo!”

“Shh, let me clean you, Zhan-ge.”

He’s never done this before, Xiao Zhan usually moving to take care of himself before Yibo has the opportunity to, but he’s too fucked out to do so now, all soft and pliant under his hands despite the verbal protests, another perk of lovemaking before dawn it would seem. Xiao Zhan hides his face behind his hands as Yibo inspects his work. Xiao Zhan’s rim is red and swollen, his entrance still open and twitching around nothing as Yibo’s cum drips from him in rivulets, painting his cheeks and thighs. Yibo dips a finger inside and coaxes the fluid from him, running the cloth over slick skin until he’s soaked up all of the semen and no more escapes. Finished with the clean-up, he knows he should move away at this point, but the parts of Xiao Zhan’s face that he can see between the man’s hands is so red and so pretty he doesn’t want to quit yet.

He lingers, leaning forward slowly thrusting the singular digit in and out of Xiao Zhan’s hole gently. Xiao Zhan clenches around him, and Yibo is surprised by how quickly the muscles seem to tighten back up around his ministrations, until the man’s entrance puckers around his finger as though they hadn’t just made love for hours.

“Yibo, please…”

It is not a beg for more, he recognizes. It’s a plea, the oversensitivity too much for Xiao Zhan to handle. So Yibo withdraws, passing the cloth over the area once more before a sudden bolt of inspiration hits him. Yibo leans forward and plants a singular kiss on abused orifice. He relishes in the gasp he is rewarded with before tossing the cloth aside and sliding back up Xiao Zhan’s body to kiss him properly even if he has to pry his hands off his face to do so.

“You’re a menace,” he declares as Yibo pulls his hands away.

“You love it.”

And Xiao Zhan doesn’t disagree, only pulling Yibo down to his lips. After a length of playful canoodling, Xiao Zhan pushes Yibo over to nuzzle into his throat, biting down on the smooth skin there with a gentle nip, before settling his head against Yibo’s shoulder. Yibo lets his eyes slide shut as Xiao Zhan touches him, caressing the muscles of his pecs and abdominals, trailing over his biceps and forearms before pulling Yibo’s right hand up to his mouth. He laves attention to each digit, kisses over Yibo’s knuckles, even drags his teeth across Yibo’s palm.

This is something he has come to notice over the last week or so, the amount of attention Xiao Zhan pays whenever he is touching Yibo during and outside of their sex. But mostly, it strikes Yibo how astute Xiao Zhan is outside of making-love. Just days ago, Xiao Zhan had massaged his way from Yibo’s feet all the way to his hips, a process that had taken nearly an hour, Xiao Zhan’s hands tracing over every muscle, every divot, every nook and cranny of Yibo’s legs and feet as though he has never touched such limbs himself. The ministrations left Yibo feeling as jointless as any orgasm. 

Xiao Zhan’s love for his hands was another matter entirely. So extreme at times that Yibo feels envious towards them, but then he chides himself and wonders how it is possible to be jealous of his own body parts. They are his after all.

“Why do you like my hands so much?”

“I like all of you, Bo-ge.”

Yibo sighs dreamily as Xiao Zhan presses a tender kiss to his pulse point, and he remembers all of the sudden another Xiao Zhan from before they started this journey, wrapping a handkerchief around his hand and telling him that his hands were precious.

“Yes, but you especially like my hands.”

Yibo can’t see Xiao Zhan’s smile, but he can feel it where it presses against the back of his hand.

“They’re human. They’re powerful and gentle and expressive. They make beautiful things in appreciation for the things you’ve seen and experienced. They tell your story. I love the way they touch me like I’m something to be treasured. That makes them pretty precious to me.”

He delivers one last kiss to a sword callous at the base of Yibo’s index finger.

He seems to contemplate something for a moment. Turning Yibo’s hand over and over in his own.

“Hey, Yibo, can I show you something later?”

Yibo blinks.

“Yeah. What is it?”

“You’ll see. You’ve been trying to get me to go swimming with you for days.”

“But we are shipping out today. You’d rather go swimming in deep water? You realize there are sharks in deep water, right?”

Xiao Zhan opens his mouth to answer but is cut off by a sound Yibo really should’ve expected to show up some time soon.

“Mrrrow!!”

Jianguo jumps up onto Yibo’s cot with a yowl. How she manages such a feat with such short legs, Yibo doesn’t understand, but manage it, she does, landing on Yibo’s feet and pawing insistently at Xiao Zhan’s over the sheet with a continuous stream of meows and loud purrs emitting from her. As good as any rooster Yibo has ever seen, Jianguo, annoying little thing that she is, is always timely in her requests for breakfast. It isn’t a bad thing. It keeps Xiao Zhan’s schedule because if Jianguo is begging for food, it is also about the time for Xiao Zhan to begin his tasks in the galley, prepping the crew’s breakfast.

Yibo groans as Xiao Zhan rises from the bed. Yibo watches with half-lidded eyes as the man bends to collect his garments from the floor, first the red under tunic that barely covers his ass, then the black and blue overrobe that reaches to his ankles. He pads around in bare feet collecting this and that, Jianguo nearly tripping him twice as she winds through his legs, before reaching back over to give Yibo a peck on the lips.

“Don’t pout. Haven’t you had enough of me this morning,” he teases at Yibo.

Yibo smirks, leaning against the pillows. 

“Never.”

“Brat. You’ll see me at breakfast.

“Too long from now. Besides most everybody else is probably still at port. It’s just us and Yixuan onboard right now. You’ll be getting up to cook for two people.”

Xiao Zhan shakes his head. 

“Well, that’s two people I’ll know are fed for the morning.

Yibo sighs, acquiescing that he is going to lose this round. Getting Xiao Zhan to flub his responsibilities is nigh impossible.

“I better see you eat this morning! You never eat with the crew.”

“You know I always eat while I’m cooking.”

“Do I though?”

“I tell you I do, don’t I? And I’m not exactly wasting away either,” he says turning to exit the room.

“No, but I want to know what you ate.”

“Of course, Lao Wang. Whatever you want Lao Wang.”

He offers a sarcastic bow to Yibo and then disappears, the tail of his robe flicking out behind him as the cat follows him out. Yibo’s eyes trace Xiao Zhan from top to bottom, lingering over the swell of Xiao Zhan’s most succulent derriere until it is completely out of sight.

Yibo falls back into the cot with a huff.

“I hate to see you leave, but I love watching you go,” he mumbles to himself before dragging his own ass up and out of bed.

♆

The UNIQ pulls out of port just two hours later, once again all the heavier for Habernathy’s equipment. Barrels and crates of bait loaded up into the hull and on the main deck for immediate use. Bait which Yibo turns his nose up to.

“It’s just a worm, Yibo.”

“Yeah, and it’s disgusting. Get away from me.”

Yibo takes off running as Xiao Zhan gives chase with a hoot and holler. One of the fishermen says something rude about thinking they had left the brothels behind at port from how Yibo is shouting. Eventually Yibo cages Xiao Zhan’s wrists in hand, yet still the man refuses to let go of the godforsaken invertebrate.

“Aw, come on, Yibo. It’s cute.”

“Only you would think something so vile is cute.”

Xiao Zhan laughs as he tosses the still wriggling bait back into a barrel, turning in Yibo’s arms before dancing backwards and away. He has certainly gotten better on his feet in the last few weeks, Yibo will give him that.

“Oh, the big bad pirate Wang Yibo is afraid of creepy crawlies.”

Yibo huffs and then tackles the man. They go down laughing.

♆

Jianguo is being fussy again. They’ve been out of port for nearly five hours and she’s been running around the deck chasing after Wenhan’s loose bootstrap for the last thirty minutes. They are well out to see, the wind blowing in their favor, and Xiao Zhan is currently in the galley cleaning up after the crew’s scattered lunch schedule.

“Mrrow,” she mews up at Yibo while he whittles the final details on that sea turtle.

“Do I look like your baba?”

“Brrp…”

“If you’re hungry, go find Xiao Zhan. He can feed you.”

Jianguo rolls over, making a cute, close-eyed expression at him. She bats at the air in front of her, and he has to remind himself that it is a trap.

“Mrrew.”

Yibo’s shoulders sag and he sets aside his knife and sculpture. Since her nibs can’t seem to fend for herself, he’ll have to find Xiao Zhan for her. He scoops the cat up by her armpits holding the animal in front of him like a doll. She licks her nose at him and stares him down making a mmrf sound as her hind legs kick at nothing.

“Oof, Yibo’s daughter needs his attention again,” snickers Seungyoun.

“She is not my daughter.”

“Right, she’s Xiao Zhan’s, that makes her yours as well, doesn’t it?”

Touche’. 

♆

“You need a better hat, Xuan-ge.”

Yixuan looks up from where he is currently trying to mend the ripped up old tricorn he stole off of the Yuehua ship before they bought and started sailing on their own. The thing is more torn fiber than actual hat at this point, and the feathers that once adorned it are more like sticks hanging out at odd angles now.

“As opposed to you who doesn’t even bother with much more than a scarf over his head. Have you no care for your eyes, Bo-di?”

“My eyes are just fine, ge.”

“Really, because we were worried there for a second,” shouts Wenhan from the bowsprite. 

“Nah, ge, he’s only blind when Xiao Zhan is around,” cackles Seungyoun. “Though how you managed to still beat that Ericson fellow at knucklebones is beyond me? You weren’t even looking at the dang jacks.”

“Jealous, Younyoun?”

“Hell no. That kind of talent can make me money at port.”

“Except, he doesn’t bother going into port anymore, does he?” sneers Sungjoo. “Can’t blame ‘im though. Even I can understand the appeal of cabining in with Xiao Zhan.”

“You sure you’re straight, Sungjoo?” asks Wenhan.

“For Xiao Zhan, I don’t think any man has the capacity to be completely straight. I’d gladly bat for Yibo’s team if that meant I got to experience the full force of that peach.”

Yibo punches Sungjoo in the side.

“Get bent, hyung!”

♆

Xiao Zhan finds him at the aft later. He sidles up next to him at the railing looking out at the sea, calmly rolling underneath a clear blue sky. Yibo has finally finished carving the dang sea turtle. It’s sitting on his work bench in his quarters. He’ll show Xiao Zhan later once they are turning in for the night. He thinks it’s his best wood carving yet.

“You know for such a ‘cool guy,’ you’re very patient with small animals.”

Jianguo having apparently needed to be picked up and ferried down into the galley like a spoiled princess just so she could curl up in her basket for an afternoon nap.

“En, she’s just lucky I like her owner so much.”

Xiao Zhan rolls his eyes.

“I don’t know. I seem to recall you quite enjoyed petting her once she settled for a bit. You even made her purr.”

Yibo shrugs turning around to meet Xiao Zhan’s gaze.

“Gotta get approval from my step-daughter.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” he quips.

“Liar.”

“Still a pirate, you know. It’s a prerequisite.”

There is a small uproar from across the deck as the fishermen once again haul in a disappointingly empty net.

“I have never seen such a group of incompetent fishermen. No wonder they needed to contract a pirate ship. No fishing company in the world would hire them.”

“It’s not their fault.”

“Oh, then whose fault is it?”

Xiao Zhan shrugs.

Yibo shakes his head.

“So what is this thing you’re going to show me later? Should I be looking forward to it?” He gives him a lecherous grin.

Xiao Zhan pushes him away by the face.

“Gross, Bo-di. It’s nothing like that. It’s to do with where I’m from.”

“Oh, I get to know about my Zhan-ge’s past.”

“Something like that.”

He sounds nervous. Yibo frowns. He has no reason to be nervous.

“Xiao Zhan, you do realize that whatever you choose to tell me about your past won’t make me change my mind about you. You could be the son of a king or the bastard of a prostitute for all I care. You’ll still be mine.”

Xiao Zhan laughs.

“Well, I’m neither of those things. My parents were what you would call artisans of a sort.”

“Were?” asks Yibo. Xiao Zhan looks down at the water, a sad smile on his lips.

“They died in an accident a few years back. I kind of set off on my own after that.”

“Mmm,” replies Yibo. “My pa was a fisherman. He died at sea when a pirate ship sunk our boat. The only reason I’m not dead too is because they thought I’d make a good cabin boy.”

“And your mum?”

“Back home, I guess. It’s not like I’ve been to visit.”

“Would you ever want to?”

Yibo scoffs as he turns his back to the ocean leaning both elbows back against the rail.

“I doubt she’d be happy to know her boy turned into a pirate.”

“I think she’d be happy to know her boy is alive.”

Yibo just shakes his head, looking down and away.

Xiao Zhan fingertips brush under his chin as he coaxes him to turn his head towards the taller man.

“We could go back one day. If you ever wanted to. Home is a place you can always return to, didi.”

Yibo feels warm for a moment, let’s the moment hover, but then he puts on his best shit-eating grin and reaches up to catch Xiao Zhan around the shoulders.

“Why would I need to do that when my home is right here, Zhan-ge?”

He presses Xiao Zhan bodily against the railing, one knee pressing between Xiao Zhan’s thighs.

“Wang Yibo!”

“Zhan-ge, didi ai ni!”

Yibo crowds in close, smiling wide and mischievous up at the man.

“Quick, douse ‘em before they can start snogging again.”

Sea water splashes over them, drenching both Yibo and Xiao Zhan from head to foot. Seungyoun and Sungjoo are positively rolling on the floor in their laughter, a pair of buckets on the floor next to them while Wenhan and Yixuan look on from across deck. Xiao Zhan slips clean out of Yibo’s hold and falls to the deck with a pained groan. The salt water gets in Yibo’s eyes and he screws them shut as he rounds on his hyungs, not noticing the sound of ripping fabric behind him.

“What the hell, you guys! Are you fucking kidding me! Just because-”

“Yibo,” Yixuan’s voice is so severe, Yibo immediately ceases his rant. That’s when he notices that Suengyoun and Sungjoo aren’t laughing anymore, and the expressions on all of his brothers’ faces is that of shock and, most notable in the pale lines of their faces, fear.

“Wha-”

“Yibo, get away from there.” Yixuan’s voice rises in near panic, a decibel Yibo has only ever heard once before and it was just before Yibo took a bullet to the shoulder.

“What?”

“I said get away from him, now!” 

Him?

That’s when Yibo finally notices the pair of crimson fins dipped in the most vibrant shade of red Yibo has ever seen twitching at his feet. He follows the fin up, a long tail of at least six feet in a deep dark burgundy and shimmering in the sunlight with black and orange reflections and scales that shimmer so bright, they seem to be dipped in gold. The valleys and ridges of the tail frame sharp hip bones, hips that just the night before Yibo had left searing bruises over during their love-making, and then the hem of Xiao Zhan’s now torn up undershirt hides anymore scales or skin from Yibo’s analysis. He finds Xiao Zhan’s face, somehow even more ethereal with his black hair hanging wet around his face and the script-like patterns around his eyebrows and cheekbones that seem to glow even through the bright sunlight.

“Yibo,” Xiao Zhan’s voice is different, but the same, richer but muted as though it isn’t designed to transmit sound through dry air. “Yibo, please. I can explain.”

Yibo doesn’t need an explanation. The truth is staring him in the face. Xiao Zhan. His Xiao Zhan is a merman, a siren, a Rényú. 

Yibo recoils away from Xiao Zhan’s reach, the delicate hands that have touched him countless times at this point now webbed and tipped with sharp keratin nails. Abject horror on his face. How is this possible?

“I knew there was something off about you.” Habernathy’s cane taps against the wood of the deck as he paces his way forward, his men flanking him. “No human is that beautiful, and your voice is positively otherworldly. Who would have thought that I would find my prize on the very ship I contracted for my fishing trip?”

Yibo turns, understanding what this man has been looking for all this time.

“You’ve been fishing for mermaids.”

“Yes, though a merman will do as well. Thank you, son, for making my task so easy. Smith, get the net.”

Habernathy’s new right hand man, Smith steps forward with a fishing net in hand ready to throw it.

“Xiao Zhan, get out of here!”

Yibo shouts as Wenhan and Sungjoo grab him and pull him away from Xiao Zhan who is hissing and snarling at the hulking man heading his way. Xiao Zhan takes off on his hands, practically flinging himself towards the ship’s rail despite the remnants of his clothing still hanging around him in tatters, as effective as any net in impeding his movement. He claws his way out of them and tips himself over the edge to go overboard, but without legs and a whole half of his body useless out of water, he is too slow. The net falls over Xiao Zhan’s head and torso. A harsh yank pulls him back onto the deck.

Yibo continues to struggle against his brothers as Xiao Zhan fights the net, tangling himself further in its trap. The spiny ridges at his back and elbows catch between the squares. The dorsal fin becomes so tightly wound in it, Yibo can see blood starting to ooze from where the netting cuts into Xiao Zhan’s scales.

“Let me go!”

Seungyoun is in front of him then.

“Bobo, you’re not thinking clearly. It’s a monster not a person. He’d as soon kill you as kiss you.”

“Seungyoun,” Yibo growls.

“Get a hook in that tail. Hoist him up.”

The order comes from one of the cronies and another steps forward to follow through. Xiao Zhan lashes out with his tail, striking the sailor across the face. There is a sickening crack and the man’s dead weight drops to the floor.

“Fuck! Hold ‘im down.”

It takes two of them to hold Xiao Zhan still enough, and the merman gives an inhuman shriek as they stab the hook into the meat of his tail, and then, still tangled in nets, they yank him up into the air like a fishing trophy.

Despite everything happening to him, Xiao Zhan starts to sing. It is not the same sweet dulcet tones he’s heard Xiao Zhan sing for him and the crew since he came aboard the UNIQ nor is it the same otherworldly music Yibo has heard in the past. It’s harsher, edged with anger and fear, and the resulting phenomenon is unlike anything Yibo has ever seen.

The sound pierces over the entire area and every man on board is forced to slap their hands over their ears. Even Yibo is forced to his knees at the pain spiking in his head. The puddles of water on deck begin to vibrate, and the waves surrounding the ship rise high enough to splash over the side. It is almost as though Xiao Zhan is manipulating the water with his voice.

“Somebody get a muzzle on that thing!”

Several men are quick to respond to that, pulling rope and leather while one of them circles his hands around Xiao Zhan’s head. Xiao Zhan opens his mouth wide to reveal a row of sharp fangs and hisses. The man draws his fingertips back before the merman can snap his jaws down on those fat digits. The sound of a whip snaps, and Xiao Zhan lets out a shriek as it strikes him across his tail.

“No,” whispers Yibo as the muzzle is secured and the furious crescendo of sound comes to an abrupt end. Yibo wilts. Sungjoo’s grip on his arms returns, the intention of the hold shifting from restraint to something more akin to support. The other man is mumbling something in his ear, but Yibo can’t process the words. It’s unimportant. 

He wants someone to punch him, slap him, hell! shoot him if they have to, anything to make him wake up from this nightmare. Anything to turn the day backward, so he can nudge Xiao Zhan awake again, nest himself between the older man’s legs, and sink into the feeling of being whole again for the first time in forever.

Instead Xiao Zhan is in front of him being hung upside down by his fishtail while a greedy aristocrat titters in delight, a heavily ringed hand reaching through the netting to touch Xiao Zhan’s face.

“You are going to make me so much money.”

He draws his hand back when Xiao Zhan shakes himself violently, his eyes dilated above the gag and muzzle preventing him from using his last means of defense.

“Feisty one, aren’t you? That’s good. People will pay to see something that fights back. Tell me are the legends true. Do your tears turn to pearls as they fall?" 

Predictably Xiao Zhan doesn’t answer, glaring daggers at the aristocrat.

“How’s Ericson?”

“Dead boss. That thing broke his neck in one blow.”

“Dr. Han, your advice.”

The old man shuffles his way forward, pressing his glasses up his face. He examines Xiao Zhan like a scientist studying his latest sample. 

“There is no doubt in my mind that he is stronger than he looks. And he apparently has the ability to control water with his voice. I would be interested in getting some samples once we are settled.” 

“That certainly explains how my dear cousin somehow drowned above water,” he says, looking at Xiao Zhan like he is Aztec gold. “How he must have offended you to risk exposing yourself like that, and yet it was a seemingly harmless prank that brought your little secret to light.”

“Sir, I worry that he may still get loose in his current state of being. It would be impractical to try and transport a creature like this fully intact.”

“Hm, and how do we solve that problem?” Habernathy’s eyes glint before he turns to his assistant. “Chop the tail off.”

Smith steps forward with an axe, the blade of which is aimed towards Xiao Zhan’s tied fin. Yibo shakes off his brother and lunges forward. The axe comes down on Yibo’s sheathed sword, the blade of the axe mere inches from Yibo’s face.

“You won’t touch him!”

Smith, despite being taller and broader than Yibo, struggles to force the axe down. Yibo swings his right leg out and kicks the man in the gut hard enough to send him windmilling backwards. Habernathy frowns.

“I know you were _close_ with him before, but don’t be a fool, brat! He isn’t human. He’s no different from the tuna you had for lunch today.”

Yibo sees red.

“He’s human enough for me.” Yibo unsheathes his blade and draws his pistol. “You will not hurt him. And you definitely are not chopping off his tail.”

Dr. Han laughs.

“The poor boy is delusional. Too long under the merman’s enchantment to know fantasy from reality.”

Smith steps back towards him, axe rising.

“Perhaps, we should put him out of his misery.”

“Now, hold on,” Yixuan steps forward, a hand on his pistol. “Nobody does anything without my say so.”

Habernathy draws a gun and points it straight at Yixuan.

“Do be reasonable, captain. This is your payload. Do you really want to risk losing it because your maknae was too much of a lovestruck fancy to see reason?”

Several things happen at once, Yibo’s brothers draw their weapons and step to encircle him and Xiao Zhan. Habernathy’s cronies all have their weapons drawn as well, swords and pistols pointed at Yibo’s brothers. 

“Yibo is my didi and a member of my crew. You can have the merman, but you and your cronies are guests here, and while I would rather not have a firefight on my own ship, I will not hesitate to shoot you for touching a member of my crew. Then we can all end up dead and none the richer for our efforts.”

Habernathy smirks.

“The East India Trading Company admires your gall.”

Yibo’s eyes widen as from out of the newly arrived barrels more men surface, two, three, four more fully armed sailors, all of them wearing the uniforms of the EITC until they are outnumbered. Sungjoo curses. They’ve had the East India Trading Company on board this whole time. These bastards! Yibo is about to cock the hammer on his pistol when Yixuan sets his hand on Yibo’s forearm. 

“You’ll understand why I arranged for reinforcements the last we were at port, right. My cousin’s death was rather disturbing. I’m sure you remember, but it also told me that I was much closer to achieving my goal than I ever have been before.” He laughs then. “If only I’d realized how close. I could have ended this whole thing weeks ago. But, nevertheless, you have my thanks, UNIQ.”

“So you repay us by staging a mutiny?”

“It’s only a mutiny if you fight against it, captain.” Habernathy holsters his gun. “Now, I am not a total scallywag, captain. I am quite indebted to your crew. I would hate to have to shoot any of you. Especially this young man who saved my life during that storm a few weeks ago. So what do you propose, captain? How can we reasonably sort this out so that everyone gets a favorable outcome.”

Yixuan jerks his chin in the direction of the standing glass tank.

“You may not believe in what I do but to maim a person of the deep is to offend the very ocean itself, and I’m not about to risk having my ship sunk for your greed. You brought that fish tank onboard for a reason. Fill it up and keep the Rényú in there. That should keep him secured until we reach your destination. After that, I want the second half of the money you promised us, you and your men gone, and the promise we’ll never hear from you again.”

“I’ll accept these terms,” says Habernathy, tucking his hands into his pockets. “On one condition.”

“What is that?” snarls Sungjoo.

Habernathy points at Yibo.

“I want him locked up. He’s too heavily influenced by the siren’s call. I don’t trust him to act rationally.”

Yibo opens his mouth to protest, but Yixuan beats him to it.

“Done.”

“Xuan-ge!”

“Shut up and do as I say, Yibo.”

Yibo’s knuckles itch to punch the sneer off of Habernathy’s face as he claps his hands and offers a faux bow to Yixuan. His form is all wrong.

“Then we have a deal, captain. Alright, you heard the man get that tank filled and get the goods in for storage. In just a few days, we’ll all be the richest bastards this side of the pacific.”

It doesn’t take as long as Yibo feels it should. But tank filled, Xiao Zhan is lowered in through the top hatch. He is still tangled in the net, and Yibo worries he is going to hurt himself further as he continues to struggle against it. He is grateful when Suengyoun hops onto the top of the tank with a dagger to cut the tangled ropes away. Xiao Zhan sees the blade and immediate tenses.

“Easy, easy. I’m not gonna hurt you,” consoles Suengyoun until Xiao Zhan settles enough for him to safely cut away the ropes. However as soon as the net is cut away, the lackey holding the rope pulley lets go, dropping Xiao Zhan, hook, line, and sinker, into the tank without any ceremony. Smith slams the hatch shut, and a padlock is latched around the hinge lock. A key makes its way into Habernathy’s hand and then around his neck on a steel chain.

“I’ll be keeping this, if you don’t mind, captain. I’m sure I also don’t have to tell you that my men will be keeping a guard over the tank for the remainder of our journey. You understand. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but…”

“Never trust a pirate.”

“Exactly.”

“You’d make a good one yourself if you weren’t an officer for the EITC.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, sir.”

Yibo doesn’t pay much attention to the exchange as he drifts towards the glass tank. Xiao Zhan has floated up from the bottom and has braced his hands against the glass, not trying to break it, but just resting there, his eyes wide in fear, the muzzle over his mouth and nose preventing Yibo from seeing him clearly.

Yibo lifts one hand and settles it on the glass over Xiao Zhan’s own much smaller palm.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and he wonders if Xiao Zhan can hear him because his shoulders sag down. Xiao Zhan startles as a towel hits the glass, (Haha! Give us a kiss, sweetheart!) and he backs away from Yibo, sinking down until he is settled at the bottom of the tank, curled in on himself like a shrimp. 

Wenhan and Sungjoo come up on either side of him, catching him around the shoulders.

“Come on, Yibo. You can’t be near him. Gotta get your head cleared.”

“My head is clear, hyung.”

Sungjoo just shakes his head sadly.

Yibo notices, helplessly, the slight shimmer of a gemstone forming at the corner of Xiao Zhan’s eye before Wenhan tugs him along, ushering him into the belly of the ship towards the cells.

_I will get you out of there, Xiao Zhan. I promise it on my life._


	7. S.O.S.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do we do with a greedy monger? What do we do with a greedy monger? What do we do with a greedy monger late into the evening?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am shook by the amazing response this story has received. Much appreciation for everyone who has bookmarked, left kudos, and commented on this story thus far. Commenter from last chapter: rideka, Lynn_ugh, Rina, lovestage28, EvilSammy55, yesmissjane, nymphaeas, daylight1005, athousandfaces, pinkcarnations, yuser, Blu_eyess, Yookay, puolimieli, JiyongxSeungri, syuuri, and Snowshoe1404.
> 
> I have a huge shout out to give to athousandfaces for the beautiful musical score she made to one of the scenes in the first chapter. Go check out her work here in my Song of the Sea playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q-lMy1t2xc&list=PLkja7zaCjRnw8y-8WmHISJCqeFclg2l6G&index=4
> 
> Chapter Warnings:  
>  Violence  
>  Minor Blood/Gore

Yibo fights against his brothers the whole way down to the cells, kicking and growling at them like a wild animal until the very last second. He even bites down on Wenhan’s forearm just as the man is shoving him into the cell.

“Fuck, Bobo! Have you lost your damn mind!”

Yibo lands in a topple on the hard ground. The shackles chained to the wall rattle as he slams against them.

“He just found out he’s been fucking a fish for the last couple a weeks. I’d go a bit looney in the head, too.”

Sungjoo’s tone is pitying at best.

“He’s not a fish,” snarls Yibo.

“Well, he ain’t no human, either,” answers Wenhan. “Lord above, I can’t believe we had a merman on board this whole time. We’re lucky we aren’t all dead.”

“That’s enough, you two. Tell Seungyoun to start in on supper. I don’t want anyone down here without my say so, you hear?”

Sungjoo and Wenhan go quiet as Yixuan storms into the brig to lock him into the cells himself. When the lock clicks, Yibo kicks the steel of the cell wall.

“Yixuan, you know this is wrong!”

Yixuan gives a nod to his other two brothers and the pair leave without taking a second glance at Yibo. All the better for it. Yibo doesn’t want to see the pity in their gazes again. Yixuan refuses to look at him either.

“Yixuan!”

“I’m sorry, Yibo. I failed you on this. I should have done better.”

“Then let me out. I can fix it myself. I can get Xiao Zhan out and-”

“Xiao Zhan isn’t human, Yibo!” Yibo actually flinches from the ferocity with which Yixuan shouts at him. “And you’re damn lucky it didn’t drown you the way it did Carrow. We were all taken by it’s charm, and for that I’m sorry. I should have been more vigilant.”

“Carrow deserved what he got. Xiao Zhan is not a cold-blooded killer.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I just do.”

“More likely you interrupted it before it could kill Carrow after it lured him in. They aren’t perpetrators of justice. Merfolk destroy humans because they want to. It’s all they know how to do.”

“Have you forgotten about the breach that was repaired during the storm?”

“For all you know it called that storm!”

“Stop calling him an ‘it’!” shouts Yibo, punching the bars once more.

“Everything you thought you knew about that creature is a lie, Didi! It lied its way onto this ship and it lied its way into your bed! What else do you think it lied about?!”

Yixuan kicks a nearby bucket of mop water over. The wood clatters across the floorboards before clashing against the far wall.

“I think he was going to tell me the truth.”

“You think it was going to tell you the truth,” Yixuan parrots wringing his own face. “Wake up, Yibo! You’ve been played!”

Yibo grits his teeth and sets his jaw in a stubborn line. Yixuan sighs, lighting a lantern for Yibo and setting it to the side.

“Cool your heels, Bo-di. It’s better this way. You can sober up for the next three days until we’re at port. Then we can put this whole thing behind us.”

“Yixuan…”

The older man pauses at the doorway, angling his head towards Yibo.

“I know you hate mermaids because of your father, but it’s Xiao Zhan. You played craps with him the other day. He helped you brace your wrist after you sprained at the helm. He started adding extra lotus root to your dinner when you told him how much you liked it. He isn’t a monster. He’s Xiao Zhan.”

Yixuan doesn’t respond. He just storms his way up the stairs back towards the top deck.

♆

Yibo drifts with the waves, not much more to do than sleep in the darkness of the brig. Drift and remember the flash of red scales under the water, of a mouth sealing itself over his and breathing oxygen into his burning lungs. How utterly stupid could he be to not have realized the similarity between that urgently given kiss of life and Xiao Zhan’s fond, love-soaked kisses given on dry land, between the sheets and the folds of the night, equally urgent but for something else entirely. 

Memories of being ten years old and gentle arms winding around him to keep him from being taken by the tide and hurled head first into the rocky reef. Was that Xiao Zhan, too? Was such an impossibility even remotely probable? Xiao Zhan would have been sixteen back then. A teenage merman fascinated by this foolish ten-year-old human trying to fish around in the corals by himself at the crack of dawn. Has he known Yibo for that long? 

Has he been looking out for Yibo that long? The matching tears certainly tell that story.

He dreams of mermaid tears and sea song and wonders if he is burning with fever or with despair, and time is measured by the bland meals that are brought to him by unfamiliar faces speaking in a language he doesn’t care to try and understand.

When he doesn’t dream, he paces like a caged animal, pent up and angry, itching for freedom and the ability to act.

He ponders over curses and love songs and tries to remember when and if he ever felt Xiao Zhan’s magic touch him. He ponders over fingers curling around a head wound at the back of his skull, of the gentle threading of those fingers over the area and the utter feeling of surrender that had stemmed from the treatment. He also remembers the feeling of being pulled back from it like cold water being thrown over his head, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that Xiao Zhan has never sought to put him under a spell. And with this knowledge, he also knows that he will devote himself to this ardor for the rest of his life because to do otherwise would be to succumb to death’s embrace.

No enchantment could fabricate the flame that was lit in his very soul the moment he met Xiao Zhan, and no measure of separation will ever douse that flame either.

♆

“I lament that we are back to Seungyoun’s piss poor cooking. It’s been two days and already my tastebuds have died”

“Fuck off, Wenhan.”

Lucidity returns to Yibo at the sound of his brothers’ voices nearing. He frowns in confusion. He thought Yixuan had banned them from coming down here.

“Eh! Mind your elders, Seungyoun.”

A tray of food is slid through the cell bars towards Yibo. He isn’t hungry, especially not for Seungyoun’s piss poor cooking.

“Eat up, buttercup. You’ll need your strength.”

Ha! Whatever for, so he can sit here yellowing in his own piss and sweat? Has it really been two days?

“Leave me alone.”

Yibo rolls over and puts his back to his brothers, closing his eyes and praying they will just fuck off already. Unless they are here to let him out, he doesn’t care to socialize with them. He can hear them whispering with each other, knows he is being talked about, appreciates their presence even less for it.

“Your fish is dying, Yibo,” says Seungyoun at length.

Yibo turns his head.

“What?”

“The merman. I mean, Xiao Zhan. I think he’s dying. I don’t know. He hasn’t moved much all day today.”

Seungyoun looks downcast in the lantern light. Like he too finds this whole situation as unbelievable as Yibo does. Wenhan and Sungjoo wear equally severe expressions.

“He hasn’t been eating either,” adds Wenhan. “The fish they’ve thrown in the tank with him are just left to swim around like happy little guppies around him.”

Yibo scrambles up and over to the bars, gripping them in hand as he looks to his brothers.

“You have to let me out. Let me out so I can save him.”

“But what if Yixuan is right and you are under his spell? What if he drowns you after you help him?”

“I’m not under a spell, Sungjoo, and if Xiao Zhan wanted to drown me, he could’ve done it a long time ago, and he wouldn’t have needed to come on land to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

Yibo would have followed his voice into the darkest depths of the ocean if Xiao Zhan had willed it. It’s a frightening thought, but he quells it with the knowledge that Xiao Zhan would never have called him to his death. Not in a million years. But this isn’t what he tells his brothers.

“Do you remember when I went overboard? When we were attacked by another pirate ship.”

“Yeah.” They nod collectively.

“I think Xiao Zhan saved my life that day.”

“Seriously!” asks Sungjoo. “You think he’s been around that long?”

Yibo doesn’t know what he thinks. He sure as hell isn’t going to mention something that happened when he was ten.

“You said it yourself. I was under the water for over an hour. How else can you explain that?”

The three share a look.

“I thought I told you three to stay away from here.”

“Capt’n!”

“Mom!

“Yixuan!”

Three heads snap around and stand at attention. Yibo would find it comical the way they about face and jump to attention if the situation were different.

“Get out all of you, and don’t let me catch you down here again.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Yes, mom.”

Wenhan punches Seungyoun as the three of them hurry out of the room.

“Come back down to lecture me?”

Yixuan sighs, looking ten years older than his actual 30.

“Yibo, baby, I know you think you’re in love with that thing-”

“Him,” snaps Yibo. “Xiao Zhan is not a thing, Yixuan.”

Yixuan concedes the point.

“Fine, him. I know you think you’re in love with him, but it’s just a spell. An enchantment. He’s lulled you into feeling things that aren’t real. That’s what they do. They seduce sailors into the deep so they can drown them. It’s how my father died, lured into the deep by a pretty voice and empty promises. They are soulless monsters, Yibo. Cursed to live loveless lives for all eternity.”

“I am not under a spell, Yixuan.”

The man opens his mouth to speak, but Yibo cuts him off.

“No, I know my mind, and I know what Xiao Zhan is capable of. Whether you believe that or not, I don’t care, but the fact remains. He may not be human, but he is still a person. He is a person with hopes and dreams and fears, and he doesn’t deserve to live the rest of his life in a fishbowl.”

Yixuan deflates at that.

“Yibo…”

“Do you know what he told me back when I was still avoiding him? Before I finally admitted that I loved him?”

Yixuan makes an exasperated sound.

“No, I don’t know what he told you, but I have a feeling I’m about to find out.”

“He told me that the thing he fears more than anything else in the world is losing his freedom. It’s as good as a death sentence for him. If what you believe is true, that he really is incapable of love, that he doesn’t have a soul, that he doesn’t feel anything other than bloodlust, then why has he been walking around on land? Do you really think that a person cursed to live without love would risk their own freedom just to fuck around with a human? Why would he risk everything he has just to be with me if he didn’t love me?”

Yixuan sets his hands on his hips and shakes his head.

“I don’t know, Yibo. I don’t know, but there is something I do know.”

“What’s that?”

In all the time he has known Yixuan, he has never wanted to punch the man more than when he hears the answer that falls from his captain’s mouth. It leaves him cold and angry, fighting back the sting of tears in his eyes because he’s right. Yixuan looks at him for a long moment. He says something that Yibo doesn’t catch, and then leaves. When he realizes that Yixuan left the key to his cell sitting atop a nearby barrel, he doesn’t think further on it.

He has more pressing things to do.

♆

Seungyoun meets him just outside the brig, a finger over his lips and Yibo’s pistol and sword in hand.

“What’s happening?” whispers Yibo as he takes the offered weapons.

“We are taking back our ship. You,” Seungyoun tosses a key at Yibo. “...are rescuing your rényú.”

Yibo smiles, tucking the key into his coat pocket and draws his blade. Together Yibo and Seungyoun make quick work of the two men sleeping in the crew’s quarters, slitting their throats in their sleep. It is as the last one gurgles his last breath that the first gunshot fires above deck. The pair race up the ladders to the main deck. Yibo jumps out as the man in the crow’s nest tumbles down landing with a splash in the ocean.

“Go get Xiao Zhan. We’ve got them handled.”

Yibo doesn’t need to be told twice, rushing over to the tank. Yibo dodges as the man standing guard there fires at him, but he closes the distance and his sword blade slides into the meat of the man’s stomach with a satisfying squelch. Gutted, the man topples sideways dead, and Yibo takes the clear path to the accursed tank. 

His brothers hadn’t been lying, but the reality of the siren’s condition is so much worse than what they’d said.

Xiao Zhan lays unmoving at the bottom of the glass tank, curled up into himself much the way Yibo last saw him while various small fish swim over him. What is disturbing is the gray casting to his skin and the complete lack of color in his fins. Once vibrant scarlet scales have darkened to a depressed sooty gray, the little color left no more than a dusty pink that barely radiates in the darkness of the night. Yibo can’t even make out the movement of his chest as he breathes, too shallow, too choked in the still water of that tank.

Yibo crouches down and sets a hand on the glass.

“Zhan-ge,” he calls to no response. Gods, Xiao Zhan, who on two legs stood taller than even Yibo and is even longer in his true form, looks too small, lying lifeless in the tank.

He swallows and jolts upwards, climbing his way to the top of the tank and digging the key out of his coat. He all but throws the padlock overboard, swinging the hatch open. He shucks his boots off, takes a deep breath, and dives feet first into the tank. Xiao Zhan barely stirs as he gathers the merman’s torso into his arms, rocking him slightly as he lifts him up and out. He sets Xiao Zhan’s torso against the lip of the hatch top as he pulls himself out of the tank, turning immediately to tug Xiao Zhan the rest of the way up. 

Xiao Zhan is not light but he isn’t heavy either, Yibo hooking the merman’s arms around his neck and lifting his lower body into his arms. He jumps down from the top of the tank and immediately kneels, cradling Xiao Zhan against his chest.

“Zhan-ge, Xiao Zhan, come on wake up. Open your eyes, please.”

Xiao Zhan remains limp, the barest flutter of breath on his lips even as Yibo shakes him.

Wenhan scuffles by, sword locked with the cutlass of one of the trading company cronies. Their scuffle upends a bucket of water that splashes over the base of Xiao Zhan’s tail. The fin twitches, and a bit of color returns to it, the scales almost lighting up in comparison to the rest of Xiao Zhan’s body even if they do lack the full coloration they had before. 

Water, thinks Yibo. He needs to go into the water. Real flowing water, not a stagnant fish tank where oxygen can’t circulate. 

Yibo works quickly, carefully extracting the hook still embedded in Xiao Zhan’s tail before enfolding Xiao Zhan into his arms again. He turns and shouts up to Yixuan who is a few meters from him fighting off a pair of ruffians.

“Yixuan, get the shoreboat!”

“Yibo, what are you doing!?”

He stumbles a bit as he makes his way to the railing, Xiao Zhan’s tail dragging on the ground like a heavy curtain. He braces Xiao Zhan’s hip on the rail as he turns the beauty’s face towards him. He presses his forehead against Xiao Zhan’s own, clammy and cold as ice.

“Please, let this work.” he breathes as he adjusts Xiao Zhan in his arms lining up their torsos.

Yibo tilts the both of them over the rail and into the freezing waters of the Pacific ocean. Hitting the surface is a shock to even his system. He holds firm to Xiao Zhan as the current pushes and pulls around them. He leans forward and presses his lips over the still despondent merman’s.

_Come on, Xiao Zhan, wake up! Swim for me, baobao, swim for me._

Yibo exhales all of the air in his lungs into Xiao Zhan’s mouth and still stays below the surface, eyes open, and waiting for the twitch of a fin, the batting of an eye, the rise of a chest. Anything that tells him Xiao Zhan is going to be alright, but before anything can happen, he is yanked up by the collar of his coat so roughly, he loses his hold on Xiao Zhan.

“No!” He yells into the deep as Xiao Zhan’s body drifts away from him.

His head breaks the surface and he is manhandled onto the shore boat.

“Yixuan, goddamnit. I-”

A pistol cocks right next to his head.

“Where’s my merman, brat? What did you do with him?”

Habernathy glares down at him from the middle of the shoreboat, two of his men on either side. Apparently, they’d hijacked the boat in an attempt to escape the UNIQ. Yibo lifts his hands, backing away towards the bow of the small boat.

“He’s gone. Swam away.”

Habernathy scoffs.

“Somehow I doubt that. That fish was in no state to be swimming anywhere any time soon. Smith, keep that harpoon at arms. You see anything move in the water, you fish it out, you understand me. I’m not losing that moneymaker. Jorgen, tie his hands. We’ll need him as bait.”

Jorgen, an ugly fellow with bleach blonde hair and muddy trousers, binds his hands with rope and shoves him into the railing. Yibo, uncaring about the treatment, can only keep his eyes on the water, the image of Xiao Zhan’s too still body sinking into the deep too fresh on his mind.

“Want me to toss him back in the water, boss. There are some steel chains we could weigh him down with. He’ll never see the light of day again.”

“No,” says Habernathy, scanning the dark water. “We need him. So long as he’s here the merman will come for him. It is only a matter of time.”

“He won’t come,” spits Yibo. “You killed him the moment you put him in that tank.”

“Well, I suppose we will find out soon, won’t we? Jorgen, bleed him.”

Yibo hisses as a knife digs into the flesh of his wrists, splitting open his arteries. He is then lifted up and halfway thrown over the rail of the small boat so that his tied arms hang overboard. The rail digs harshly into the sensitive flesh below his armpits, and Jorgen’s booted foot stomps down on his chest hard enough to make his sternum pop. His knuckles skim the water, and the blood drips down into the sea. The water splashes up, stinging into the fresh wounds.

“I’m telling you. He won’t come.”

“Then I’ll just have to enjoy the show when a shark comes up to bite your arms off.”

In the time that Yibo was being trussed up and bled, the other mate Smith, has been skimming the water, harpoon in hand a lantern light held high in his grasp as he tries to see as far beyond the boat as he can.

“Boss?”

“What is it, Smith?”

“There’s something in the water.”

“There are a lot of things in the water, Smith. It’s the sodding ocean. Stay focused.”

“But boss-”

A sudden splashing sound draws their attention. Both Habernathy and Jorgen move away from Yibo, hoping to find what they are looking for. Another splash sounds, and this time Yibo catches a glimpse of a fin breaching the surface with a flail. It isn’t Xiao Zhan’s though. It’s the wrong color, yet the mermaid hunters don’t seem to realize this.

“Ready that harpoon. Jorgen, get the net. We are not letting him get away this time.”

Despite the activity in front of him, Yibo’s attention goes behind him as something tugs at the rope around his hands. He chances a glance back and his heart stops. A pair of webbed hands are peeking up out of the water. Sharpened nails shred the rope to tatters. Those hands wind around his slashed wrists. There is a warm sensation, like his blood being stirred from the inside as the wounds heal over as though cauterized from within. The hands disappear, but Yibo stays where he is, acting as though nothing has changed. His sword is by his feet, but three against one are not good odds. He doesn’t know about the other two, but Habernathy is packing. He’d be shot dead before he could do much more than stand.

He continues to plot how he is going to get out of this situation when suddenly gooseflesh prickles over his skin as a haunting song drifts over the boat like a shroud, resonant and echoing up from beneath the waves.

_What will we do with a drunken monger?  
What will we do with a drunken monger?  
What will we do with a drunken monger  
early in the morning? _

_Way Hay and up he rises  
Way Hay and up he rises  
Way Hay and up he rises  
Early in the morning _

The rewritten sea shanty is sung in an eerie key, filled with dissonant rise and falls and far too slow to be anything but a death march. Smith, harpoon raised, begins to fret over the voice.

“We shouldn’t be out here, boss. This is his territory. We best leave while we can.”

“And go where, back to the ship? We bag this fish and we make our way back to shore. We’re as good as done for without it.”

“But sir…”

“It’s just some bloody singing, sailor. Leave it well enough alone. It can’t hurt you.”

They continue to argue, unaware of their third wheel Jorgen beginning to lean over the railing of the ship.

“Hey, gents…”

_Leave him in the bed with a lusty harlot  
Leave him in the bed with a lusty harlot  
Leave him in the bed with a lusty harlot  
Early in the morning_

_Rid him of the posies in his pocket  
Rid him of the posies in his pocket  
Rid him of the posies in his pocket  
Early in the morning_

_Way Hay and up he rises  
Way Hay and up he rises  
Way Hay and up he rises  
Early in the morning _

There is a bright red glow shining below the water’s surface, a menacing contrast against the black of the sea around it. It hovers underneath the boat as though something were floating below the boat’s keel. Jorgen’s nose is nearly level with the water by the time Habernathy notices something amiss.

“Jorgen, get away from the water.”

“But it’s so beautiful…”

_Take him for a tumble in cold waters  
Take him for a tumble in cold waters  
Take him for a tumble in cold waters  
Early in the morning_

_Drag him to the deep and stow him under  
Drag him to the deep and stow him under  
Drag him to the deep and stow him under  
Early in the morning._

_Way Hay and up he rises  
Way Hay and up he rises  
Way Hay and up he rises  
Early to his last sleep._

The song ends and nothing happens. The virulent red glow that was just beneath the surface drifts away into the darkness, and there is no further stirring beneath the surface of the water. Collectively all three men heave a sigh of relief as though they were expecting something to happen.

“Hmm, I thought-Argh!”

A pair of hands surge up out of the water, grip Jorgen around the head and pull him out of the boat and into the water. The man disappears below the dark depths with a loud splash. Habernathy reels backwards, dropping his pistol in shock, while Smith throws the harpoon into the sea with a curse.

“Bloody hell!”

Yibo bounds up to collect his sword from the floor of the boat and drives it straight through Smith’s ribcage. When Yibo draws his sword back out, the man plummets into the water, fodder for the sharks. Yibo rounds on Habernathy, now scrambling to regain his pistol from the floor of the boat. The man gets his grip on it and aims it up at Yibo, nearly point blank. He cocks the hammer and is about to fire when an inky tar-like substance, spat from somewhere behind Yibo, blinds him. He screams in pain, flailing and rocking the boat so violently in his frenzy that Yibo worries he is going to capsize them entirely.

Yibo swipes his blade forward and across the fat man’s throat and the silence that follows is a balm to Yibo’s nerves. Habernathy falls sideways into the keel of the boat and Yibo has to kick and shove to roll the man over the edge and into the water. He floats for a moment before sinking down with a release of air bubbles.

Everything goes quiet for a moment, the bubbles from Habernathy’s corpse the last sound among the gentle wash of the waves and the wind. It is terribly dark despite the first peaks of dawn just starting to lighten the eastern horizon. Yibo feels chilled to the bone, still soaked from the water.

His ears perk up at the sound of something moving in the water. There is a splashing sound and the few thuds on the far side of the boat. A dim glow warms the space around the small boat, and Yibo turns to find Xiao Zhan hanging from the rail of the boat, only his upper body visible above the waves. His color has returned, eyes bright in the starlight, and as devastatingly beautiful as Yibo has ever seen him, seawater dripping from his hair and skin, down the line of his throat, over the arch of his shoulders and across the firm plains of his chest. In the darkness, the markings around his face glow a soothing orange rather than the fierce red they were a moment ago before Xiao Zhan dragged Smith below the water. Swirling patterns like that of the various coral Yibo has seen in his life, spirals and arches and clean crisp lines that seem to accent the already perfectly sculpted bone structure beneath. 

“Hi,” he says at length, and there is an entire song trapped in that single word just waiting to be sung.

Yibo swallows.

“Hi.”

Xiao Zhan seashell necklace tinkles as he shakes his hair of water. He quirks one side of his mouth up, closing his eyes in quarter moons as he reaches a hand up towards Yibo. 

“You, uh, want to help me up?”

Yibo shifts towards him, setting his feet against the boards as he takes Xiao Zhan by the wrists. Yibo allows himself a moment to feel Xiao Zhan’s pulse, notes that his skin is warm once more, no longer cold and clammy. In fact, he wonders idly if the merman may run several degrees hotter than him naturally at how the touch seems to sear into the pads of his fingers. Yibo takes a deep breath, relishing in this, the knowledge that Xiao Zhan is alive and well and will be just fine, and then he throws his weight forward with a heave.

Surprise registers on Xiao Zhan’s face as Yibo bodily pushes him into the water.

“Yibo?!” he calls as his head breaks the surface once more, face pale despite the color that has just returned to him. 

“You need to leave. Leave and never come back.”

“I don’t understand. You-”

“Go, you fiend!” Xiao Zhan recoils as though Yibo has just slapped him. “You don’t belong here, so just go!”

“Yibo, why are you saying this? This isn’t you talking.”

“I don’t know what fantasy you’ve written inside your own head, but you thought you could force me to fall in love with you; well, I don’t. I don’t love you. I never have!”

“Why are you lying to me?”

“I said get out of here, monster! Get lost!”

Yibo throws the nearest thing to him, a broken wood bench from the Habernathy’s previous thrashing, into the water almost close enough to hit Xiao Zhan. The projectile gets the message across, though, and Xiao Zhan takes off backwards with a flick of his tail fin and a splash of water. As the surface settles, Yibo screws his eyes shut. His teeth clench so hard his jaw begins to ache.

Yibo waits, standing in the small shoreboat to see if he comes back. He waits so long the sun begins to rise. Dawn breaks over the horizon. The sun climbs higher until the heat of high noon beats down on the back of his neck. He waits as the sun starts to descend. He waits until twilight streaks over the water. And finally. Finally as the sun begins to set once more, he picks up the row.

_“...Why has he been walking around on land, putting himself at risk just to be with me?”_

_Yixuan deflates at that._

_“I don’t know, Yibo. I don’t know, but there is something I do know.”_

_“What’s that?”_

_“When this is over, you need to make him leave. You need to tell him to get lost and never come back.”_

_“No,” growls Yibo. “I won’t do that.”_

_“You have to, Yibo, otherwise rescuing him will be for nothing. There will be others. Greedy bastards who want to get their hands on an easy dollar, and so long as he is around you, he will be an easy target for them. If you want to truly save him, you need to give him up.”_

Yibo grips the row handle so hard, blood starts to swell around his palm at the remembered conversation had in the darkness of the brig. He steels his heart and begins to paddle his way back to the UNIQ, the sunset at his back an array of dusky oranges and reds reminiscent of a certain merman’s tail fin.

Xiao Zhan, in all that time Yibo held his vigil, never came back.

♆

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author: I'm sorry!!! *Runs away to hide*


	8. The Long Voyage Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some times the hardest direction to sail is towards hearth and home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, fishies!! I have a treat for you. No tricks here, I swear it. Tis the final chapter! This story is at an end. It has been an amazing ride, and taking you all along with me has been a truly wonderful experience. Thank you for welcoming me into this community and pour praise all over this work. I am truly humbled by your kind words and gestures.
> 
> As always thank you to everyone who has commented: shahral_SAH99, syuuri, nymphaeas, daylight1005, emma_screams, pinkcarnations, dartwood, dannysoli, Blu_eyess, lanwuxiann, Snowshoe1404, yesmissjane, EvilSammy55, lashtondaydream, lovestage28, Lynn_ugh, naychaaaa, and Calliope13.
> 
> And of course much love to everyone who has left kudos and bookmarked.
> 
> For some mood tracks for this chapter, I give you the last few tracks of my mood playlist for this story featuring Ocean Soul by Nightwish, Kepler as sung by XZ, and the Marry Me Suite from Pirates of the Caribbean. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqwX2eZg_tY&list=PLkja7zaCjRnw8y-8WmHISJCqeFclg2l6G&index=25
> 
> And without further adieu, I give you the final installment of Song of the Sea. The Long Voyage Home.

UNIQ leaves Dr. Han, the only surviving member of East Indian Company on their ship, stranded on an island, trussed up, and surrounded by the damning evidence of his illegal association with pirates. Sungjoo even has the bright idea of branding the man with the letter “P” in a mockery for the man’s dalliance into piracy. It’s the least that could have been done to him, especially after Yibo finds out that in the short time Xiao Zhan had been held in that tank, he’d already started conducting experiments on the merman, but that is neither here nor there.

There is clean up to be done. Scourging away the evidence of the East India Company having ever been aboard. Equipment that can be pawned off, personal belongings that can be abandoned, weapons added to their own artillery. Bait they can use for fishing themselves, but there is simply too much of it for their needs, so most of it is gifted freely to the ocean.

Wenhan unearths a small pouch amongst Habernathy’s belongings that contains a colorful array of the same sparkling pearls Xiao Zhan had traded for his passage aboard. Mermaid tears, each of them different in color, shape, and size: blues, greens, whites, and golds. There are but a handful of them, but it is evidence enough that Habernathy has been looking to fish a mermaid out of the sea for himself for a long, long time. 

It makes even Yixuan storm up for a while.

The tank, wretched thing that it is, is dismantled and left abandoned at the next dock for someone else to clean up. When Yixuan finds Yibo later the same day, he thrusts a small pouch into Yibo’s hand.

“These are yours,” he announces blankly before leaving Yibo alone once more.

He doesn’t pay it much respect at first, minding his knife as he carves out a rough outline of the tail on his latest sculpture, but when he does get to it, he almost regrets having bothered. Yibo opens the pouch and pours the contents out into his palm. Thirteen identical black iridescent pearls flaked in ruby red sparkles

Xiao Zhan’s tears, found at the bottom of the tank.

Weeks pass without any sign of the merman, and life returns to how it was before Xiao Zhan sang for him. Life returns to the same arrangement of play fights, hard work, plundering gold, and fighting the patriarchy. Yibo and his brothers return to the simple life of sailing the seven seas without a care in the world as though nothing had changed other than the ridiculous sum of gold currently sitting in their hull from the mermaid tears Yixuan sold at port. Everything just as it was before.

Except…

Nothing is the same.

Not for Yibo. 

He has known love, has felt it in the marrow of his bones and the pit of his soul. He has ached for it, yearned for it to come back, but knows that can never be, so he resents it. His fingers itch to peel it out from under his skin but thinks he will suffocate to death without it. He wonders if this is actually why the legends say to love the sea is to love death. No mortal man could survive feeling that kind of love and having it ripped away from them. Perhaps mermaids drown their lovers, not by dragging them into the deep but by leaving them alone in the shallows, too human to follow them down and unable to breathe in a world vacant of the colors that burst forth in deference to their all consuming passions. Yibo certainly thinks it might be best to turn himself into the sea’s hands and pray that when the water floods his lungs, he will die in the arms of the person he loves most.

But then he remembers that Xiao Zhan had wanted to stay, and it was Yibo who chased him off.

Chased him away for his own good. 

It’s why he makes the decision to use Xiao Zhan’s tears to buy his own ship. A small vessel he can manage on his own with a handsomely sized cabin, a good crow’s nest, and enough space for him to sail across the ocean with little trouble.

“Are sure you want to go off on your own, Yibo?”

Yibo looks up from where he is tying off a pulley at the main mast to see Yixuan standing at the head of the gangplank. Arms crossed and a piece of wheatgrass between his teeth, Yibo’s hyung is the picture of concerned older brother. Yibo would almost think Yixuan was any other sailor were it not for the pistol at his belt and his new tricorn hat complete with long fluffy feathers and beaded good luck charms.

“Nice hat, ge.”

Yixuan laughs as he reaches up and pulls the aforementioned accessory off his head.

“Thanks. One of my didi said I needed a new one, but I don’t think this one quite suits me.”

Yibo squints at Yixuan as the man fiddles with the brim of the hat, fingers stroking over the feathers even.

“You get on well enough,” Yibo declares turning his attention back to his work.

“Mm. I supposed that’s your usual way of saying goodbye. You don’t.”

“I need time, ge. It’s… It’s too difficult.”

“And I supposed carving out that new sculpture is supposed to help?” asks Yixuan, gesturing to where Yibo’s work in progress sits next to his carving knife. It’s a rough piece, still mostly unfinished. The tail still needs detailing done and the human torso is a soddy imitation of the source material but he’ll get it there.

“Leave it alone, ge.”

Yixuan, never one to pay much mind to Yibo’s tempers, strides over to the little wood carving. He doesn’t pick up or touch it, but he does hum in appreciation of it.

“It’ll be a nice piece when it’s finished. Our Yibo is ever astute in his attention to detail.”

“Hn,” is the only reply Yibo graces him with. Yixuan sighs, stuffing one hand in his pockets.

“You really did love him, didn’t you?”

Yibo’s smile is bittersweet at best. Seungyoun had told him not two days ago that these things were always better to think back on from the perspective of that old adage. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all… Yibo thinks it’s utter bullshit.

“Does it matter?”

Yixuan tuts.

“You made the right decision. He would never have been safe around you. Around us. Around humans.”

Then why does he regret pushing Xiao Zhan away every day?

Yixuan shakes his head as though hearing Yibo’s thoughts. “Well, maybe going off on your own can change that.”

Yibo frowns, suppressing the need to roll his eyes. Coming from Yixuan, of all people, the attempt to kindle hope in Yibo’s heart falls flat. Yibo knows the man is just trying to cheer him up.

“Xuan-ge.” He draws out the syllables in a whine just for the sake of being petulant. Yixuan ignores his attempt to be a baby.

“Are you going to look for him?”

“No,” Yibo says with such finality that Yixuan actually flinches a bit.

“Why not?”

“It’s a big ocean, ge. Even if I did try to find him, I doubt I would succeed.” It comes out snippy and short, the way he used to talk when he was still a teenager who didn’t know any better. He’s doing it again, taking out his frustrations on one of his brothers, and isn’t that the whole reason why he’s decided to set out on his own. Yibo sighs. “There is someone else I need to find first, ge.”

Yixuan nods in understanding.

“You know you’ll always have a family with us.”

Jiangou pads her way across the deck with a little brrp. Yibo holds his hand out to her, and she nudges her whole head into his palm, nuzzling into him the same way she used to nuzzle into Xiao Zhan. It had taken some work and time, but she’s finally warmed up to him. Not that she has much choice, mind you. She’s not much of a ratter, and without Xiao Zhan around to dote on her, she needs to butter up somebody for her meals, and that somebody ended up being Yibo who had been the closest with Xiao Zhan and therefore the most reasonable shift in attention which was why she was now here with him on Wugan rather than still on the UNIQ.

“Thanks, ge.”

And he is surprised to find he truly is grateful. To know that he has a place to return to when he needs, if he needs, is a greater gift than anything else Yixuan could have given him. It is as he is mulling that over that Yixuan throws the hat at Yibo. He barely catches it.

“Ge?”

Yixuan gives him a lopsided grin.

“You’re your own captain now, Bo-di, and every captain needs a proper hat.”

Yixuan makes his way towards him, plucks the hat from Yibo’s hands and plops it on his head without much ceremony, and for a moment, Yibo is thirteen years old again with a complete stranger drying his tears and patting him on the head until he falls asleep, half an orphan far away from home with no hope to ever return, and Yixuan is the same shiphand who took him under his wing and gave him the strength to survive until he could stand on his own two feet in the face of this cruel world they had found themselves in.

He doesn’t say goodbye to his brothers. Not really. Hugs are given, promises made, and well wishes delivered, but it’s not goodbye. Not really. He knows he’ll see them again whether it be in ten weeks, ten months or ten years. He’ll see them again.

♆

Yibo sails toward the past. For the first time in nearly ten years, Yibo sets foot on the docks he used to chase his father down as a child. It is the middle of the day, and there are fishermen, merchants, and traders all along the pier. They are friendly and don’t pay much mind to his attire. He even recognizes a few of them. Jiejies who used to look after him on the water, a gege who once showed him how to set a fishing hook, an uncle who once set aside the tastiest coconut milk sweets for him. Everything looks so much like he remembers, and his heart aches because of it.

A few of them recognize him too, and that in and of itself causes enough of a stir that Yibo wonders maybe he should have covered his face or something. Well, at least it helps direct him to where he needs to go.

The old cottage is still there. Nearly unchanged, the same sunflower patch, the same rickety fence, even the same shingles over the windows albeit they are certainly in need of repair. Maybe he can take care of that later. He can oil the fence, tend the garden, and repave the walkway. He can do all of those things. He has time.

He knocks on the door, worrying at his lip as he waits. When no answer comes, he knocks once more before he can fully lose his nerve. The seconds stretch by, and when still no answer comes, he decides to call it and try again another day.

Yibo retreats so rapidly, he almost misses the soft call of an older woman’s voice.

“Hello?”

He freezes, sweat beginning to bud at the back of his neck. He lifts a hand to his hat, realizes his hands are shaking. He must not have moved for a long time, because the woman at the door makes a sound of irritation. It’s quiet, barely anything anyone could call rude, especially considering he is the one who has disturbed her.

“Can I help you, young man?”

Yibo turns slowly, clearing his throat and letting the hat on his head fall to his side so that his face is clearly visible. There is a crashing sound, but he doesn’t meet her eye yet. His throat is still clogged with emotion when he speaks.

“Hi, Mom…”

Yibo sets his eyes on his mother for the first time since that fateful day when she had fussed over him incessantly, making sure his collar was right and his boots were well oiled. She is older of course, wrinkles lining her face and hands, her hands which were just a moment ago carrying a potted plant. She also is now much shorter than him which is probably also a given considering how much taller he is now then when he was 13. 

“Yi-Yibo?”

“Yeah, mom. It’s-It’s me.”

His mother takes several shaky steps onto the porch. She looks so fragile. Yibo takes two long strides to reach her, his hands come to her shoulders to steady her even as her hands come up to caress his face.

“Yibo. My Yibo. My baby…alive...”

He nods. Her thumb brushes under his eyelid, smearing dampness across his cheekbone. He’s crying. He didn’t even notice. She pats him on the cheek, tugging at him, and he leans down to let her hug him fully.

"My God! Let me look at you."

She laughs up at him, her eyes turning to crescents as she takes him in, looking him up and down.

“You’re so tall. Most handsome too.”

“I’m sorry, mother. I’m sorry that it took me so long to come home.”

“Shh,” she hushes him. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters. Come inside.”

And as she pulls him in and settles him at the old dining table, a warmth he hasn’t known in eons settles into his chest. Somewhere between telling her about the attack on his father’s boat, becoming a pirate, his hyungs, and an abridged version of the East India Trading Company story, Yibo’s heart begins to ache a little less. 

For the moment, settled in the warm creaking walls of his childhood home, he realizes that Xiao Zhan was right. Home is in the people you can always return to, the people who will never judge you wanting, in the people who will smile simply because you are smiling, in the people who embrace your happiness is their happiness. His hyungs… His mother… His...

He closes his eyes and smiles at the silly questions his mother asks. Does he still prefer vinegar in everything or has he learned to appreciate other flavors? Will she ever get to meet his crew mates? Where has he been too and what were the most amazing sights? He answers her calmly, happily, helping her prepare supper in the small kitchenette.

That evening in the small seaside cabin, even as Yibo tells his mother all about his life on the high seas, he doesn’t tell her about Xiao Zhan. He doesn’t know how. 

♆

The days pass, and Yibo relearns how to be a son. He fixes up the house, makes repairs, and runs errands for his mother. She in turn dotes on him, feeds him more food than he can stomach, and fusses over him just like she used to. 

He doesn’t stay with his mum, too used to the gentle rocking of being on water to sleep on solid ground. He lives and sleeps on his ship. It’s comfortable for him, and somehow, insignificant as it is, the decreased distance between him and the vast open water makes it easier. He spends his days on the land, enfolding himself in distractions. Occasionally, Yibo catches himself staring out to sea, caught up in the daydreams and the memories of what once was and what could never be again.

“You’re in love,” his mother declares to him one afternoon while Yibo is up on the roof repairing a leak he noticed during the last storm. “You’ve been staring at the ocean for nearly fifteen minutes like a lovestruck guppy.”

He hadn’t realized he’d been zoned out for that long.

“Sooo,” she coos as she climbs the ladder to sit with him. “Who is she, and when do I get to meet her?”

Yibo shakes his head with a scoff.

“It’s not a girl, ma,” he looks down, refusing to meet his mother’s eyes, “and I don’t know where he is.”

Work worn hands fold around him. His mother’s lips are warm at his temple.

“He must be very special to have captured my boy’s heart.” 

She has no idea...

“Well, if it is meant to be, the stars will guide you back to each other. He’ll take one look at you, and then who in their right might would ever run from my handsome boy?”

Yibo shakes his head, but let’s his mother continue on in her ramblings.

Later that night, Yibo lies awake in his bed. Jianguo’s little body is curled up beside him, and where normally her weight is a reassurance, it does little for him tonight. He feels hot and itchy, almost suffocatingly so. Maybe it’s because of what his mother said. Maybe it’s because there is a full moon and the tide is heavier than normal. Maybe it’s because the ache in his chest is all the worse for no reason at all.

He huffs and rolls over onto his back.

The roof of his cabin is plain enough, dark wood, darker nails, cross beams and a pair of hanging lanterns he can turn on when needed. His sparse belongings are scattered throughout the cabin. His coat hanging off a hook, his boots by the door, his latest sculpture freshly completed sitting atop his work bench, a pale mockery to the real thing. There are other things in the cabin that are not his own. A netted sack hung off a chair, a black hanfu that is too long for him tucked into the standing wardrobe amongst his spare clothing, a half-used sketchbook tucked into a corner of the work table. Items he acknowledges are in his space but that he never touches.

The moonlight shines in through the window, and he wonders if maybe he should open the pane. It’s stuffy and warm in the cabin, so he arranges his limbs under him and rises to let the outside air in. It is a cool night, and the breeze is a balm on his overheated skin. He closes his eyes and leans his head against the pane. That’s better, but it does nothing to relieve the itch under his skin, like an army of sea urchins crawling just below the dermis.

There is a bottle of rum by his elbow. He’s tempted for a moment to just down the whole thing, but he reaches for the water instead. He drinks long, his throat working over the cool fluid until there is none left. It does not help, and he slams the bottle down hard enough to startle Jianguo awake. The cat makes an upset sound then jumps from the bed, scurrying off into the darkness somewhere.

“Goddamnit, Yibo! Get a grip!”

He punches his fist into the wall, hears a satisfying pop, and does it again and again and again until he has no more energy left and his knuckles have split open. 

“Argh!”

He screams as he collapses onto the floor in the fetal position. His hands pull at his own hair, the pain a sensation he can make sense of. It’s physical. Physical is good. Physical will heal. Emotional… Emotional is another thing entirely…

It spirals and multiplies. It scabs over and then rips open over and over and over again. A never-ending cycle of wanting and losing and hoping and despairing. This juxtaposition of delight and delirium. He wants to curse Xiao Zhan for doing this to him. For saving him. For loving him. For listening to him. For leaving him. He curses himself for sending him away. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. Being selfish wasn’t an option then, and it isn’t one now, because he has nothing to be selfish about. Xiao Zhan is gone. Gone, gone, gone. Lost to him amongst the waves and the ocean current, gone home to the deep blue abyss, and the sooner he makes peace with that, the sooner he can move on with his life.

He doesn’t want to move on.

“Xiao Zhan, come back,” he whispers. “Please come back.”

He doesn’t know how long he lies there tucked in the space between self-pity and self-hate begging into the silence for something he will never have. If he lies here long enough, dawn will come, and then, he can chalk this whole thing up to a fever dream. A break in reality. A nightmare. He can rise with the dawn and keep moving forward like nothing is wrong and the world isn’t cruel enough to keep from him the person that makes his heart sing. In the light of day, he can hope that maybe his mother is right and the stars will line back up for them. In the light of day he can trick himself into believing that fate isn’t laughing at him. In the light of day, he can work himself into forgetting that he is a complete and utter fool… But there are hours between now and then. Hours where hope doesn’t exist and the world takes pleasure in its own cruelty.

“Mrrow.”

The sad little sound accompanied by tiny little licks and nuzzles to his face pulls Yibo back from a precipice he didn’t realize he’d fallen into. His eyes feel swollen and wet. The floor under his head is also damp. God, he hates being such a crybaby, but the cat seems to enjoy it, lapping up his salty tears while a deep rumble resonates from her chest.

“Jianguo…”

His knuckles throb as he lifts his bruised and battered hand up to pet her and then thinks better of it, not wanting to smear blood all over her fur.

“Mrow.”

She folds herself over his face, and he doesn’t have the heart to push her off. He just curls an arm around her and lets the vibration of her purr lull him back to calm, back to sanity, and down into sleep. He chuckles in the back of his throat. Like this, with her belly over his ear, he can almost pretend her purrs are more musical than they really are, and he smiles, letting the illusion wash over his senses.

Seasong echoes in his head as the rest of the world falls away.

♆

When Yibo wakes, it is still dark outside, maybe an hour or two before dawn. Jianguo is no longer on his face, and the blankets have been pulled over his shoulders. Wait… He is in his bed. But he’d fallen asleep on the floor. He sits up and the covers fall around his waist. He raises his hand to his face, and notices that it is wrapped in clean dark purple seaweed. When he unravels the oceanic bandage, he finds his knuckles completely healed, not even any bruising around the joints that he had so brutally battered just hours ago.

That’s when he hears the song.

_Are the sparkling waves enough to keep you warm?  
When you think of the light that radiates from me,  
Will you still let me sing for you?_

Yibo jolts out of bed and runs onto the deck.

_Twinkle, twinkle like your body.  
Hidden among a sea of lonely stars,  
I can still find you. _

Out here the voice is clearer. A soft tenor that cascades over the water like sea foam. Yibo jumps up on the port rail and holds onto one of the suspension lines for balance as he scans over the water for a familiar shape. 

_Hanging up in the sky as a precious light,  
You reflect back to me my loneliness.  
Reminding me, I love a lonely star._

There is a rock outcropping surrounding the lagoon not far from the docks, and that is where Yibo spies the upright figure seated there, the glow of moonlight reflecting off of a waterfall of long black hair, the glittering scarlet of a long red tail and shimmering scales. He can almost make out the gleam of the markings he once saw frame the most beautiful face in the world.

“Xiao Zhan!”

He knows he has been heard when the siren’s song cuts off abruptly and the figure dives over the rock edge back into the water. The bioluminesce of Xiao Zhan’s patterned markings glowing through the waves.

“Zhan-ge!”

Yibo doesn’t hesitate. He dives headfirst into the ocean descending all the way to the rockbed where he floats long enough to open his eyes against the sting of saltwater. Bubbles obstruct his vision and the tide is stronger than he expected, but he stays long enough to catch a glimpse of something humanoid swimming ahead of him. He pushes off from the seabed and swims to the surface.

His head breaks through the waves, and he yells.

“Xiao Zhan!”

He hears a splash and starts to breaststroke his way towards it.

“Zhan-ge, wait!”

He ducks back under the surf and swims even as the current attempts to pull him in the opposite direction. He does what you should never do in a riptide. He fights the current, swimming head first against it, and he doesn’t give a lick of a care. His resolve hardens as a shadow flits across his limited vision, and he surges that direction as long as he can until his lungs start to burn. He kicks towards the surface, but before he can break into the open air, a strong wave crashes over him and rolls him back under. He exhales as slowly as he can manage, moving with the roll of water before his head breaks the surface. He sucks barely half a lungful; then the tide is pulling him back under.

He is flung almost all the way to the bottom where the sand gleams white in the moonlight. He kicks off again at a diagonal rise to the surface, feeling the pounding of the surf about him. Another current catches him and pulls him back down. He tries to roll with it, and it flings him straight into the rocks he saw Xiao Zhan sitting on earlier. The impact forces the air from his lungs, and he has to close a hand over his nose and mouth to prevent himself from inhaling. He grips onto the rock face and tries to haul himself up, but another wave hits him shoving him along the outcrop. His lungs burn and he heaves himself forward just as a pair of arms wind around his waist and haul him upwards.

He lands flat on his back on the rock, and he inhales as much air as his greedy lungs can suck, coughing up water the whole while.

“Yibo...Yibo! Breathe. Please, don’t die!”

A new galaxy bursts into existence in Yibo’s soul at the sound of Xiao Zhan’s voice, that beautiful, haunting, impossible voice, and his eyes snap open to see the merman himself hovering over him, fear marring that beautiful face. In less than a heartbeat, Yibo’s hands capture Xiao Zhan’s head, pulling the merman down, so he can claim the elder’s lips in a searing kiss.

Yibo tastes sea salt and fresh clean ocean on Xiao Zhan’s lips. He drinks the other down like a sinful ambrosia, life-giving and etheric. Yibo’s right hand trails down Xiao Zhan’s spine, touches the spiny ridges, finds them smooth and sleek and keeps going, stroking the thin membrane between each bony protrusion. Xiao Zhan gasps and Yibo takes the opportunity to carefully slip his tongue between Xiao Zhan’s lips and into his mouth. When Yibo does this, Xiao Zhan pulls back.

“Yibo, don’t-”

“Shhh, shh, trust me.”

Xiao Zhan opens for him as Yibo pries his lips apart once more, diving in, greedy for more of Xiao Zhan’s taste. In this form, Xiao Zhan’s teeth are sharp, like a cross between a shark’s and an eel’s, and Yibo glides his tongue carefully along their ridges so that he doesn’t cut himself on them before tangling his tongue with Xiao Zhan’s own.

All the while, Yibo’s hands continue to trail over Xiao Zhan’s body. Over the spiky protrusion at his elbows, down the front of his chest and stomach, around his waist, and finally into the curve of his hips where mammalian skin gives way to smooth scales and ridged spines and flared fins. 

Xiao Zhan moans as Yibo fingers the silky soft line of his tail just over the curve of the man’s hipbone.

The high tide continues to churn around them. Yibo presses up and over to hover above Xiao Zhan. Both of his hands catch around his trim waist and hold. His mouth descends from Xiao Zhan’s lips, trailing down over the damp skin of his neck and chest until he can nose at his pulse, feel it for himself under his cheek, languish in the sound of it in his ear.

“Yibo, you can’t. I-” Xiao Zhan sounds breathless and overwrought as though Yibo has stolen the air from his lungs. He writhes below him as Yibo bites into the skin at his pectoral. At his feet, Yibo feels Xiao Zhan’s willowy tail fins flair and sway back and forth. “You-You could’ve drowned. What is the matter with you? Why would you...”

Xiao Zhan’s voice is unsteady. Puzzled through with doubt and confusion, both of which Yibo has put there. 

“I would rather drown in your arms this very minute than live a thousand lifetimes without you.” Xiao Zhan’s breath hitches. “I love you, Zhan-ge. I love you, by land and by sea, I love you.”

“Yibo,” Xiao Zhan’s voice is softer, so soft Yibo almost can’t hear him over the crashing of the waves. “I-I…You...I love you, too.”

He trails off, and under Yibo’s hands, something truly astonishing happens. Scales give way to warm skin, the spines soften and melt into human shapes and angles, and Xiao Zhan’s face shifts from something otherworldly to something familiar, equally beautiful but more human. Hands that are no longer webbed reach up and wind into Yibo’s hair, dulled nails scratching against his scalp deliciously. When two bare human legs wrap around his waist, Yibo truly knows that he has returned home.

“How is this possible?” he hushes into Xiao Zhan’s mouth.

Xiao Zhan tilts his upper body up until their foreheads touch. His eyes shimmer in the moonlight.

“Yibo, it’s my love for you that allows me to walk in your world.”

Joy swells up like a tsunami. It floods through Yibo’s entire being and spills over unrestrained to Xiao Zhan in the overflowing strength of his smile. Their next kiss is wet with sea mist and emotions too strong to manifest in any other element but water. There is a slight tinkling sound on the rocks as scattered pearls bounce and roll their way into the water. Yibo dries the rest of Xiao Zhan’s tears before they can solidify with peppered kisses and careful brushes with his thumbs.

Xiao Zhan’s smile forces a laugh out of him that is powerful enough to rock the both of them. Xiao Zhan laughs with him, gentle and melodic above the white noise of the ocean around them.

Yibo worships Xiao Zhan’s body with scattered kisses, bites, and love filled caresses as though Xiao Zhan were a sea god and Yibo his sole devotee. His hands slide down warm flesh, lips trailing after as he makes his way down to ridge of his lover’s hips, dipping lower to kiss the merman’s sex, hot and erect and already dripping with excitement.

“Yibo.”

The hushed call of his name is all the incentive he needs to take Xiao Zhan’s length in hand, lips closing around the tip to taste Xiao Zhan’s skin, a warm flavor reminiscent of salted caramel and toasted coconut. Xiao Zhan all but sings as he takes him further in his mouth, the fingers of his other hand already dipping down to tease at Xiao Zhan’s entrance. The fingers of his left hand circle his rim while he suckles at Xiao Zhan’s cockhead. He groans, surprised to find slick already collecting there, naturally secreted by Xiao Zhan’s body. Gods, he cannot wait to discover more about Xiao Zhan’s anatomy. Yibo gives one last full-bodied suck to Xiao Zhan’s cock before lifting up and rolling them at Xiao Zhan’s naked insistence if the tugs at his ears and hair are anything to go by.

Yibo entered the water without a shirt, so all Xiao Zhan has to peel off of his body are his trousers. Yibo helps him with the ties and buttons at the front, and then Xiao Zhan is stripping him. The last barrier between them gone, Xiao Zhan arches himself backwards. 

“Baobei, wait. Let me-” Yibo calls out in warning, but with hands braced on Yibo’s chest, Xiao Zhan impales himself on Yibo’s substantial member without preparation, apparently deciding he doesn’t need it. Yibo’s eyes roll into the back of his head and his back arches off of the rock face at the friction.

“Xiao Zhan,” gasps Yibo as he is enfolded into Xiao Zhan’s tight, damp heat, the man’s body stretching around Yibo’s girth as a long drawn out moan falls from his open mouth. Gods, he is so tight, Yibo feels like he is suffocating right up until he titles his hips forward, drawing another loud moan from his lover. He sits up to enfold Xiao Zhan in his arms. Xiao Zhan tilts his head back, long hair cascading down his back and waist to brush over the top of his ass, as Yibo sucks on the sensitive skin of his collarbones.

They move slowly together, rocking against each other as though time were inconsequential. Seasong surrounds them, and Yibo doesn’t question how or why, not when the notes fall from Xiao Zhan’s lips like a prayer, intermingled with calls of his name as he makes love to him. 

Yibo slides deeper into Xiao Zhan on every thrust, the friction of each slide delicious enough to make his toes curl. Yibo is rewarded with tiny pleased moans and surprised gasps whenever he rolls his hips in just the right way to catch that sensitive button deep inside the merman until he can’t take it anymore. Until neither of them can take it anymore. 

Xiao Zhan’s gentle pace gives way to a more harried tempo. Yibo’s grasps at Xiao Zhan’s hips, moving him easily up and down his length as Xiao Zhan’s knees spread wider on either side of him. Yibo drops back onto the rock drawing Xiao Zhan with him in a filthy kiss that is more teeth than lips. Holding Xiao Zhan’s hips steady, Yibo braces his feet on the ground and begins to thrust up and into Xiao Zhan at a punishing tempo.

“Ahh hah! Yibo!”

“Zhan-ge!”

Yibo rolls them once again, Xiao Zhan’s back to the rock giving Yibo full control over their movements. His right hand comes up to wrap around Xiao Zhan’s engorged length, and he drives forward in a frenzy, his hips slapping against the soft flesh of Xiao Zhan’s backside, all of his senses reduced to where he and Xiao Zhan are connected as bolts of electricity branch out along his spine every time he sheathes himself in Xiao Zhan’s heat. They are so close to the edge where the rockface slides back into the water, that Xiao Zhan reaches up to grip the edge and pull himself closer to the water until the tips of his hair and his hands can sink into the sandy shallows of the lagoon. Yibo follows him and watches in astonishment as the water inspires orange and red patterns to flow across Xiao Zhan’s skin, vibrant and luminous in the dark of the coming dawn.

The sight of it spurs him on.

Xiao Zhan’s body temperature rises, and the merman writhes underneath him in rapture, a portrait of ecstasy. Yibo’s cockhead brushes against his lover’s prostate and Xiao Zhan unravels beneath him. His spine arches into a perfect bow, head tossed back so far he nearly submerges himself in the lagoon water, and the sound that spills from his lips is inhuman in its unearthly beauty, siren’s song mixed with utter abandon. Xiao Zhan’s release spills over his fist, and the merman continues to shudder and moan as Yibo continues to thrust until his own orgasm rips through him, leaving him beriff of his senses, all the world fallen away except for the exquisite creature in his arms.

Xiao Zhan. His Xiao Zhan, whose heart beats like a drum under his ear.

He comes back to himself slowly to feather like kisses along his brow and cheeks, euphoria still soaking like a damp cloth over his awareness.

“Yibo. Lao Wang. Bo-di.”

As the variations on his name begin to register, Yibo notices that the sun is just beginning to brighten the horizon. They’ll need to move soon. Once the sun touches the horizon, the beach will be flocked with activity. The seagulls have already begun stirring, fishing for their breakfast among the small crustaceans that have lollygagged too long in the shallows.

“Yibo…”

Yibo lifts his head to peer into Xiao Zhan’s eyes. The glowing markings have disappeared back into his skin, but Yibo’s fingers trace over the memories of them anyway.

“Stay with me, Xiao Zhan. Stay here with me.” 

He laces their fingers together, bringing Xiao Zhan’s small palms to his mouth.

“Keep me,” he whispers into the soft skin of the merman’s wrist.

Xiao Zhan draws himself up, hands lifting to lace into Yibo’s hair, and his lips are soft and coaxing as he claims Yibo’s mouth for his own. He pulls away far too soon to whisper into Yibo’s ear.

“Until the oceans dry and the land returns to the sea, Yibo.”

Xiao Zhan smiles like the sun, bright and warm and enduring. The very center of his universe.

♆

Jianguo has caught a mouse. A rare sight indeed, one that Yibo will be sure to give her lots of rewards for later. But now that she has one, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, tossing it around deck and batting it about before finally setting it at Yibo’s feet.

“Well, I don’t want it.”

Jianguo looks up at him with wide amber eyes, lifting up one paw to pat at his pant leg.

“Mrrw.”

“You caught it. You eat it. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with your prey?”

She gives him a little chirrup and then closes her eyes, her mouth making a cute “w” shape. She looks like the perfect picture of pride and joy. Must have something to do with present company. She never looks at him like that normally.

“Oh, did Jianguo catch something?”

He turns his gaze to where Xiao Zhan, now dressed in the hanfu that was hanging in Yibo’s wardrobe, has just walked onto the deck, as graceful on two feet as he is without in the water. When he meets Yibo’s eye, his face lights up in a brilliant smile. One Yibo cannot help but return in kind, remembering fondly the feeling of taking Xiao Zhan for himself once more in the confines of his cabin, their cabin, in an actual bed the could perhaps one day become their marriage bed, the siren’s rich voice reduced to hushed gasps of pleasure under Yibo’s hands.

“Looks like it. Now she doesn’t know what to do with it.”

As he speaks, Jianguo darts towards Xiao Zhan twining her way between his feet. Predictably, this doesn’t end well as Xiao Zhan, who still needs to be mindful of maintaining his balance while walking, loses his footing and trips over her. A moment of panic crosses his face and then he is flailing towards the floor.

Yibo catches him before he hits, and they both go down laughing, landing in a sprawl with Yibo’s limbs akimbo and Xiao Zhan’s head cradled to his chest.

“I swear, I’ll never get used to walking around. How do humans worry about keeping their balance all day long? It’s exhausting,” Xiao Zhan mumbles into Yibo’s shirt. The tips of his ears are red. “And then you do things like run and jump and dance, and it’s just impossible. No wonder you are all always covered in bruises.”

Yibo cards his fingers in Xiao Zhan’s hair, pushing it away so he can see the merman’s face.

“You never need to if you don’t want to. I can always find you in the water. You’ll breathe for me, won’t you?”

“That would be impractical for the long term.”

Yibo’s heart flutters even as Xiao Zhan pouts.

“This feeble old man is cursed to be covered in bruises from falling for the rest of his days.”

“I’ll help you stay on your feet.”

“Mn. You’d better.”

Xiao Zhan’s kisses are like the ocean, vast and bottomless, and Yibo will bathe in them for as long as he has the good fortune to be showered in them. They break apart as Jianguo yowls, apparently disgruntled about not being the center of attention. Yibo helps Xiao Zhan to his feet, fingers intertwined and skin warm in the sunlight of the bay. Those ocean eyes shine at him, their depths colored with warmth and life and the deepest of adorations. He could fall into those ocean depths for the rest of his life, content and happy, cradled in their warm currents.

Yibo has always loved the sea. It is vast and mysterious and holds so many beautiful things. It is gentle and ferocious, life giving and deadly. It is everything Yibo has ever wanted to know and more. Yibo could never deny the depths of his love for the sea, his infatuation with its song. He thinks he has loved the sea since the day he was born. Knows this to the core of his being. 

Yibo smiles, broad and uninhibited, at Xiao Zhan, and Xiao Zhan smiles, in turn, right back at Yibo.

He never thought, in a thousand years, that the sea would one day love him back.

✨🌊✨

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ✨🧜🏼♂️✨
> 
> 🎆🎉🎊🎆🎉🎊🎆
> 
> Have a safe and Happy Halloween Everyone!!!🎃🎃🎃

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! More coming soon. I have the vast majority of this written, so updates will come very quickly, and it will be finished before the end of the month in observance of BJYX Week 2020.
> 
> The song sun here is my personal translation/interpretation of the lyrics for Xiao Zhan's rendition of Stars in the Sun from "Our Song." For a listen follow the link below:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wTYXpgnkyE&list=PLkja7zaCjRnw8y-8WmHISJCqeFclg2l6G&index=3


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